Judge Sides With School in Punishment for ‘Any Life’ Matters Drawing

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I envy children and the fact that many of them get to be removed from the nastier political discourse of the day. It’s ugly out here and children deserve to have their innocence preserved and protected for as long as possible. But occasionally, some of the negativity in the adult world creeps in and does affect our little ones.

That's what happened when a 7-year-old drew a picture to comfort her Black friend in school. The illustration ultimately resulted in a lawsuit.

B.B. wrote 'any life' under Black Lives Matter.

In 2021, Chelsea Boyle’s daughter, identified as B.B. in court documents, was 7 years old. After her class learned about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., B.B. drew a picture for her friend to make her feel better, Fox News reported.

There were round figures with various skin tones: brown, beige, yellow, etc. Above the shapes, B.B. wrote: “Black Lives Mater.” Then, in what may have been an afterthought, she included the phrase, “any life.”

If you’ve paid attention to the discourse around Black Lives Matter since its inception, you’ve likely noticed that “All Lives Matter” has often been used as a rebuttal to BLM. Instead of focusing or prioritizing the Black lives that have been oppressed or lost by the various systems in this world, saying All Lives Matter acts as a distraction from the issue at hand.

All lives aren’t experiencing what Black people are, systematically, unjustly, across the globe, so saying “all lives matter,” has proven problematic.

B.B.'s punishment was severe and lasted two weeks.

So, when the mother of B.B.’s Black classmate saw the illustration and the message, she didn’t appreciate it and reached out to the school to express her disapproval. She emailed the school stating that she would not “tolerate any more messages given to [her] at school because of her skin color.”

She also said that she trusted the school would handle the matter. The school’s principal, Jesus Becerra, handled the matter by telling the 7-year-old that her drawing was “inappropriate” and “racist.”

The punishment didn’t stop there. B.B. was banned from drawing pictures at school, told to issue a public apology, and was made to miss recess for two weeks.

B.B.'s mom didn't even know her daughter was being punished.

To make matters worse, Boyle didn’t even know that her daughter was being punished for the drawing. She only learned of B.B’s punishment when the parent of another child in the same class told her about it.

“They get to make the decision and punish them and this was kept secret from me,” Boyle said. “As a parent, I don't like secrets.”

When Boyle asked her daughter why she didn’t tell her about the punishment, B.B. said, “'Because I got in so much trouble at school, I didn't want to get in trouble at home.'”

Boyle claimed the school violated her daughter's First Amendment rights.

Boyle sued California's Capistrano Unified School District in 2023, claiming that it violated her daughter’s First Amendment rights.

“It was heartbreaking, really, to realize that this is what schools and children are subjected to and what it's come to,” Boyle told Fox News Digital.

A California judge however, sided with the school district. In his ruling Judge David Carter, wrote that while “B.B.’s intentions were innocent,” the fact that the students involved were first graders, the drawing was not protected under First Amendment rights. As far as the punishment, Carter deferred to the school’s principal.

“A parent might second-guess Becerra’s conclusion, but his decision to discipline B.B. belongs to him, not the federal courts,” he added.

Boyle plans to take the case to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

The judge also stated that in the three years since the incident, both girls have moved on.

“B.B. stated that the drawing did not strain the friendship between them. They have taught us an important lesson about moving on,” he said. But Boyle doesn’t agree. “She has had severe anxiety and panic attacks that have been debilitating and it's continued,” she said, adding that the treatment they received from the district caused the family to leave California. 

“I have been contacted by numerous families within that district and all over the country that these same sort of things have happened to them, which has pushed me along to continue this fight,” she said. 

To her point, we hope the subject of teaching children accurate and relevant history won’t be conflated with exorbitant, secretive punishments.