The American Civil Liberties Union filed a federal lawsuit challenging South Carolina’s “disturbing schools” law. The law allows students in school to be criminally charged for normal adolescent behaviors including loitering, cursing, or undefined “obnoxious” actions on school grounds. The ACLU is also challenging a similarly vague “disorderly conduct” law, which prohibits students from conducting themselves in a “disorderly or boisterous manner.” The statutes violate due process protections of the Constitution.

Whether civil rights statutes that prohibit federal financial recipients from discriminating on the basis of disability, race, and sex allow plaintiffs to be compensated for emotional distress injuries where they show that they were victims of discrimination.