A South Carolina family has filed a lawsuit after their 15-year-old daughter was assaulted for not participating in the pledge of allegiance at her high school in Columbia.
The lawsuit was filed against the state department of education and Lexington One School District on March 9, according to WLTX News.
Honor roll student Marissa Barnwell was walking to class at River Bluff High School last November when she was confronted by a teacher, Nicole Livingston, in a hallway at around 8:40 a.m. The pledge of allegiance was being recited over the loudspeakers as it is daily, and Livingston allegedly had an issue with the ninth grader walking in the hallway as it was broadcast.
The lawsuit states that Marissa was “silently in a non-disruptive manner to her class” walking in the hallway during the pledge of allegiance when Livingston approached her while “yelling and demanding that M.B. stop walking and physically assaulting her by pushing M.B., on the wall and forcefully touching M.B., in an unwanted way without her consent so that she would stop walking in recognition of the Pledge of Allegiance and Moment of Silence that was announced at the conclusion of the Pledge.”
Video of the incident captured Livingston pushing Marissa up against a wall after she turned a corner on her way to class. Marissa recalled the assault during a press conference announcing the lawsuit.
“She pushes me into a wall, then she snatches my ID and says she’s going to report me to the office,” said Marissa. “I’m just confused and like ‘get your hands off of me, get your hands off of me’, you can hear me say that in the video. I was just in disbelief, I had never expected something like that to happen to me. I was completely and utterly disrespected. No one has apologized, no one has acknowledged my hurt,” she added. “The fact that the school is defending that kind of behavior is unimaginable.”
Marissa also said that she had never met…
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