I had a case come up that is indirectly related to the thread title, and it got me thinking. Can schools legally use corporal punishment on a high school senior who has already reached the age of 18?
It is not my intention to debate the wider questions of the propriety of corporal punishment. We have done plenty of those threads. However, the state of the law is, and has been for a long time, that a defense to a battery charge is reasonable corporal punishment on a child.
But an 18 year old isn’t legally a child. It seems that if a teacher or administrator paddled an 18 year old, it would be no different than paddling an unruly customer at a restaurant or in a store. I would think that the 18 year old could sue for battery and receive compensation for damages at least, or possibly throw a punch at the teacher who was trying to paddle him.
So, under what legal authority could a school paddle an 18 year old?
In Texas, a federal court upheld a school’s right to restrain and beat adult students, apparently even if they explicitly said they didn’t consent, just a few years ago. The Supreme Court refused to hear the case.
[QUOTE=The 5th Circuit Opinion]
Nothing in the caselaw exempts non-minors from the corporal punishment of students. Furthermore, the Texas statute governing the use of corporal punishment in
schools, makes no differentiation between adults and minors, stating that all
students are eligible to receive corporal punishment. TEX. PENAL CODE § 9.62.
[/QUOTE]
I find this stunning and lazy judicial thought.
The first sentence that “nothing in the case law” exempts adults from corporal punishment is absurd. EVERYTHING in the case law exempts them. It is only a defense to battery to physically correct a “child.” Thousands of years of case law has held that. No adult may be beaten without consent.
Second, although the TX law makes no distinction, it constitutionally must unless we allow one group of adults to beat other adults without a hearing, trial, or other form of due process. If prisoners were paddled, under the authority of TX law, the court would have no problem striking down that law. But just because the law (implicitly, according to the court, and through silence) allows corporal punishment on adults, then it is per se valid.
As a person who supports corporal punishment for school children, I can find no possible way that such a thing could be allowed on adults.
If I had never witnessed corporal punishment I would probably be in favor of it. More times than responsible punishment I saw rage filled beatings by teachers. I especially don’t like the idea of beating adults.
I like a disrupting adult student being barre3d from any form of education for the rest of their life.
Yepper, can’t paddle for any reason , just hand them a shovel and tell them that is what they chose.
I bet we could ger to pass in Texas…
I wonder what most here suggest be done with an 18 year old Senior a month before graduation when they have done something really bad. Something that would make a younger kid have to repeat a whole year grade.
I personally do not think that, “Aww, just let it go.” is a good or correct response but that is just me.
Punish them like an adult, maybe convict them of a hate crime and all the baggage from that that they can carry for the rest of their lives?
Went to Catholic grade school and although I was ruler whipped, paddled, etc., that was nothing to the look of disappointment I got from my parents.
I did all 12 years in Catholic Schools so I hope you all don’t judge all people who did the same as being like me. Bawahahaha
As freshman in 1957, I saw the principal, Sister Antoinette, Same size about 4.4’ tall, ( Like Henrietta on NCIS LA ) tell Pat C, the biggest baddest Senior football playing cold eyed monster in school to pick her up and place her on her desk.
She then slapped the tar out of him and kept going until he quit smiling. Then he had to pick her up & place her back on the floor.
He seemed to take it just fine & as far as I ever heard, he never did whatever set her off again.
Had he not complied in any manner, the entire High School would have then beat him to a pulp if ‘Bolo’, a grade school Nun, who was a female wrestler before she became a Nun prolly would have killed him. LOL
Sher was the outside recess controller of the whole school. Best run school yard in the state if not the whole country. No one crazy nuff to mess with ‘Bolo.’
Oh, Pat C turned out to be a fine human being & a good father & husband, etc.
Man, in California, you can get in legal trouble for hugging a student. I had no idea there were still so many places in the country where you could still beat 'em.
It’s not necessarily common in all of those states. Ohio was on that list until 2008 or 2009, but around 99.5% of districts had already gotten rid of child-beating and the handful of remaining districts almost never did it.
Could continuing to go to school, presumably knowing (or being imputed as knowing) the School Rules ™ and the law, possibly constitute consent? E.g. Virginia has its infamous “Implied Consent” law that says that by driving on a Virginia public road, you consent to take an alcohol test if reasonably requested to by a Virginia cop. You can’t get out of it by putting a “no consent” bumper sticker on your car. And it isn’t like sex - you apparently can’t “withdraw” consent at will.
Adults are, anyway, not required by law to go to school (or are they?). Seems to me that, in theory, an 18 year old still in high school could legally tell the school to stuff his report card in a dark place and wander off and take the GED, move to another state and enroll in the high school there, apply to a private school, or just become a dropout. Sort of like how if you enlist in the Army, you consent to possibly getting shot at by hostile forces.
Of course it is – but this thread is about whether or not it’s legal. And that’s what’s disturbing. (As far as I know, it’s not in PA. The worst I ever got in Catholic school was a smack on the butt for disturbing band practice when I was in first grade.)
Sure. But in the case in question, she seems to have revoked that consent. They restrained her and beat her up anyways.
But you can revoke that consent. There may be administrative penalties for your drivers license, but if you’re conscious and refusing to consent to a search of your blood, they can’t just do it because hey, you implied consent earlier. They’d have to either handle the case without that evidence or go to a judge and get consent for a blood draw.
I know what this thread is about… I was offering my mundane feeling about someone’s post. It’s not a GQ or GD thread that is narrowly focused.
Plus, not everyone believes it’s worse to hit a child than to hit an adult. It’s revolting that it’s legal to hit any school student, regardless of age.
The case in Texas I can only find reference to Federal rulings on it, all basically throwing the case out or (as has been said) lazily saying it was fine. But I don’t actually see how it’s actually legal under State law in any of the fifty States. All States have laws against battery. All States view schools and school employees as acting in loco parentis for school children, on the premise that there is a legal guardian to act for when dealing with a child. An adult has no legal guardian unless for some reason that adult has been given one due to special circumstances (typically intellectual disability or incapacitating infirmity of some kind.)
Since you can’t act in loco parentis for an adult, you can’t choose to exercise corporal punishment on them. If my 30 year old son (hypothetical son) pocketed a candy bar in a store in front of me, I have no more right than anyone on the street to whip him with a belt. I may be his father, but he’s an adult, and that’s battery.
Further, everywhere I’m familiar with eighteen year old school students can leave school premises at any time. The case in Texas, the student asked to leave and withdraw from the school. Someone dropping out of High School is not an uncommon thing, and in most States the schools have no power to act against it even if the child is under the age of eighteen as long as the child is above the cutoff age for compulsory education (16.) In special circumstances they can restrain the child if they need to for safety reason, but adult High Schoolers in their senior year drop out all the time. Schools don’t have the authority to imprison them to keep t hem in school. Taken to its logical absurdity, if they did they could hold someone for the rest of their natural lives if that person refused to say, take exams and such and thus never satisfied graduation requirements.
Maybe the Texas student never pressed a State claim for some reason, but assuming she did and it wasn’t handled as battery I think it’s pretty simply a case where courts handled the law badly. Many courts in other States have found against teachers who use inappropriate physical discipline against students.
