DALLAS _ Houston high school senior India Landry had sat through the Pledge of Allegiance in the classrooms of at least six teachers _ about 200 times, she says, with zero trouble.
That is, until the 17-year-old landed in Principal Martha Strother's office at Windfern High School in Houston.
As the Pledge of Allegiance streamed through an intercom Oct. 2 at the school, India continued to sit in the presence of Strother and a secretary.
"Well, you're kicked outta here," Strother told India, according to a federal lawsuit filed last week.
The suit against Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District and Strother alleges that school officials violated India's First Amendment rights by expelling her from school for her decision to sit through the pledge.
India's family said in its complaint that Strother sent the teen to the office of Assistant Principal Penny Irwin-Fitt, who told her that if her mother didn't pick her up soon a police officer would escort her from the building. The assistant principal said India was going to stand for the pledge like other black students in her class, according to the suit.
"This isn't the NFL," a school secretary allegedly told India.
The teen's mother said in her suit that the school administration had been "whipped into a frenzy" by the controversy over NFL players kneeling during the national anthem to protest police brutality and racial inequality.
India was eventually allowed to return to the school, after a local TV station aired a report about her removal, according to the suit.
Before a TV reporter called the family, Kizzy Landry _ India's mother _ had met with Strother on Thursday to discuss the teen's return to school, according to the suit. Strother allegedly told the family that sitting was disrespectful and would not be allowed, suggesting that India instead write about justice and the deaths of black people.
The principal reversed course after the TV story, the suit claims.
Cypress-Fairbanks ISD didn't immediately reply to a request for comment. The district told the Houston Chronicle in a statement that no student would be removed for refusing to stand for the pledge.
Randall Kallinen, India's attorney, said in an email that the teen decided to sit for the pledge because "the flag does not represent liberty and justice."
The suit was filed Saturday, and it remains to be seen how a court will proceed now that India has been allowed to return to school.
What is clear is that the Supreme Court ruled decades ago that schools cannot force children to salute the flag. The matter was decided in 1943, after Jehovah's Witnesses complained that being compelled to pledge to the flag under a West Virginia law violated a tenet of their faith that prohibits them from worshipping images.
"Those who begin coercive elimination of dissent soon find themselves exterminating dissenters," Justice Robert H. Jackson wrote for the majority. "Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard."
After being kicked out of school, India missed a couple of grades in English and algebra and amassed absences that may prevent her from graduating on time, her attorney told the Chronicle.
The suit alleges that India suffered "great mental anguish." Her family is seeking an unspecified amount in damages.
