Jury awards $500K to boys forced out of Santa Clara school over alleged ‘blackface’
(KRON) — A Santa Clara County jury has awarded $1 million — $500,000 each — and tuition reimbursement to two students who sued their administration for allegedly falsely being kicked out of the school in 2021.
The now-high-school graduates left Saint Francis High School in Santa Clara after a photo of them wearing a black-paint-like substance was leaked to the public.
Despite the now-publicized photo coming across as two boys doing “blackface”, one of the boys who owned the substance claimed it was actually his acne medication, court filings said.
On Monday, the Santa Clara jury decided to side with the teens.
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Court exhibits show a photo of three shirtless boys wearing the cream with one flashing rock ’n’ roll horns.
The photo of the three Saint Francis High boys ended in upheaval when it was released at the peak of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, with many claiming the students outwardly took the photo to do blackface.
The boy and his family, however, claim he used the cream as acne medication. The plaintiffs said when his two friends saw him applying the cream, the two boys then followed suit in solidarity.
In court filings, the school’s attorney says administrators disagreed with the families’ explanation that the photo was innocent.
While two of the boys’ families say Saint Francis High mishandled the situation and are seeking damages for defamation and breach of contract, the school says it had “sole discretion” to punish the two students and that the families left voluntarily in June 2021.
The former students and their parents initially sought $20 million when they sued Saint Francis High in 2020, shortly after the photo surfaced online.
As criticism mounted, school administrators gave the boys a choice of voluntarily withdrawing or being expelled. The students withdrew.
“Tragically, defendants achieved their goal of portraying (the) plaintiffs as poster children of racism at (Saint Francis High School), resulting in the devastating destruction of the boys’ young lives,” attorneys for the Dhillon Law Group wrote in their court complaint, in which they accused the school of “virtue signaling” and rushing to punish the teens without a fair investigation.
Following Monday’s verdict, Saint Francis High must pay both students $500,000 each, as well as a little under $60,000 for tuition reimbursement, court filings said.
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“The jury rightly found we did not breach our handbook, did not violate the students’ free speech rights, and did not defame the students. However, we respectfully disagree with the jury’s conclusion as to the lesser claim regarding the fairness of our disciplinary review process,” Saint Francis High School said in a statement to KRON.
As a result of the disagreement, the school claims to explore further legal options, “including appeal as there is no legal precedent applying that claim to a high school.”
Saint Francis High here references the plaintiffs’ appeal for breach of contract, claiming no school has ever given the option to expel a student without giving them a fair chance for trial among administrators at the school.
“We are grateful for the strong support of our community throughout this case. We look forward to putting this matter behind us so we can return to focusing solely on educating our vibrant student body and living the Catholic values of the Holy Cross tradition, which are rooted in hope, respect, integrity and family,” Saint Francis High School said.
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