Nearly one year after 14-year-old Ahmed Mohamed was arrested for bringing a “suspicious-looking” homemade clock to class, his family has filed suit against his former Texas school district, the principal of the high school and the city of Irving.
The lawsuit filed Monday claims that Ahmed’s civil rights were violated in the incident that made the 9th grader go viral last September.
Accusations of racial and religious profiling fueled the hashtag #IStandWithAhmed. Even President Obama chimed in on Twitter, telling the boy: “We should inspire more kids like you to like science. It’s what makes America great.”
The charge — possession of a hoax bomb — was dropped, but MacArthur High School suspended Ahmed for three days.
Citing a pattern of disproportionate disciplinary actions for black students in the Irving Independent School District and a history of anti-Muslim sentiment in Irving, the lawsuit alleges that Ahmed was discriminated against based on his race and religion. It also claims his Fourth Amendment rights were violated when he was interrogated by police and principal Daniel Cummings for over an hour without the presence of his parents before he was arrested.
See here for some background, and here for a copy of the lawsuit. No question, Ahmed Mohamed was treated atrociously, and it’s well known that the Mayor of Irving is a raving Islam-basher of long standing. Lawsuits are a blunt instrument, but sometimes they’re the best way to get a message across. This is a message that the city of Irving needs to hear. The Observer, which highlights key aspects of the suit, has more.
So now it is terrorism by proxy, lawyer style. This was a put up job by the family. Note the family didn’t work for a living while they were here, and apparently don’t have jobs in Qatar, yet they can afford to come back and vacation here in the US. How is that possible? Who is funding this family? Why?
I do hope that Irving fights this zealously so that all these inconvenient truths are brought out to the public. In fact, Irving should arrest the whole family for attempted extortion. I only wish I lived there so I had a shot at being on the jury panel.
It looked like a bomb. I would never let my child take such a thing to school. U don’t care if he was a Muslim, Christian, or athiest.
If my kid was treated this way I’d sue those racist bastards to the point where they’d have to get a loan to buy toilet paper.
He bought an imitation bomb. Nothing racist about it. He should be disciplined. If he would have been a white Christian you would have called him a nutty right winger. Instead of going to the White house he would have been talked about on CNN and his parents investigated. The world has gone crazy!!
@ M@:
Even if we say the kid is as innocent and pure as driven snow, and had absolutely NO idea that his disassembling a clock and putting the components in a case would appear suspicious to anyone with a pulse, are you really telling me the parents, who have much more life experience also had absolutely NO idea how this would appear? Leftists like these are suspending kids for pointing “finger guns” and chewing Pop Tarts into the shape of guns. The parents really had zero clue that this would look bad?
Occam’s Razor suggests that they did in fact know, and that this was intentional, to evoke the response that it got.
Were people polite in their dealings with this young man? That may have calmed things down considerably.
I agree 100% with Bill