Suit Threatened Over Student’s Suspension : School’s Beer Shirt Ban Brews Legal Brouhaha

Like many other high school students, Randy Genochio went out before school began this fall to buy himself a few new shirts for his senior year at Mt. Miguel High School.

But shortly after school began, it became clear that school administrators did not share his taste in clothes.

Genochio, 17, was suspended once and ordered to change clothes three times because he wore shirts bearing the logos of beer companies, a violation of Mt. Miguel’s policy prohibiting garments that advertise “any alcoholic or tobacco product or messages which encourage use of drugs of any type.”

Contending that the sanctions violate Randy’s First Amendment guarantee of free speech, the youth’s father, lawyer Greg Genochio, is preparing to sue the Grossmont Union High School District if the policy is not rescinded.

“I don’t support insubordination on the part of my son or any other student,” Greg Genochio said. “However, I feel that if he’s told not to do something that he has a constitutional right to do, then, as a technical matter, he has a right to defiance.”

“This guy’s just wearing a T-shirt that has an insignia on it,” said Robert DeKoven, a specialist in education law at California Western School of Law, who is assisting Genochio with the case. “The insignia is basically benign. It’s his way of expressing himself. This should be treated just like someone wearing a San Diego Chargers T-shirt.”

District Supt. Robert Pyle and first-year Principal Pat Carroll see the policy as an extension of the district’s stringent rules against drugs and alcohol. The rules call for immediate expulsion of any student caught with illegal substances on campus.

Logo shirts, such as Genochio’s from Corona Extra and South Pacific Lager, promote consumption of beer, which under-age students should not be doing, Pyle said. In addition, they contribute to an attitude that beer-drinking is acceptable, an “in” thing to do, he said.

“Aren’t schools criticized all the time for just following the path and not making any difference?” Pyle asked. “We’re saying we make a difference, and we’re trying to take a stand. . . . We’re trying to buck the trend.”

“I really think in our society today, one of the biggest problems we have is drugs and alcohol,” Carroll said. “ . . . As an educational institution, we’re trying to educate kids not to advocate the use of drugs and alcohol. It’s not good for you.”

Randy Genochio’s confrontation with the school district began Sept. 15, when he wore a tank top to school bearing the logo of Corona Extra beer. Randy said that he knew the school’s policy existed because it was printed in the student handbook last year, but he said it was not enforced under previous Principal Thomas Flood.

Vice Principal Gerald Halterman called the youth into his office and ordered him to go home and change the shirt, Randy said. He complied.

But the next day, he wore a long-sleeve South Pacific Lager sweat shirt to school, with another shirt underneath in case he was ordered to change again, Randy said.

“I thought I had the right to wear it, and I didn’t think they’d go so far as to suspend me from school for wearing a beer shirt,” Randy said. “I thought the most they’d do is make me take it off. That’s why I wore an undershirt underneath it.”

But Halterman assigned Randy to Mt. Miguel’s “in-school alternative program,” where he spent Sept. 17 doing his homework, writing an essay on his transgression and waiting for the day to end, the youth said. He said he missed one exam.

Randy said he has been suspended from school twice before: once for forging a hall pass and once for fighting.

On Sept. 25, Carroll spotted Randy with the Corona shirt at a junior varsity football game on school grounds and ordered him to change it again. Randy complied, pulling on a shirt he had in his car.

The Mt. Miguel policy states that “garments may not display profane or obscene language or pictures; vulgar gestures; racial, ethnic or sexist slurs; advertising of any alcoholic or tobacco product, or messages which encourage use of drugs of any type.”

Pyle said that some other Grossmont district schools have similar policies, but he was not sure whether they all do.

He said that advertising for other products and political and religious messages on clothing are acceptable.

Greg Genochio and DeKoven do not believe that the shirts promote anything. Even if they do, it is not the right of administrators to determine which products are acceptable to the school district and which are not, they say.

Pyle said that First Amendment rights are in some cases subject to limitations, but according to DeKoven, those limits are specifically spelled out in the state Education Code.

Material that is “obscene, libelous or slanderous” and incites students by creating “a clear and present danger of the commission of unlawful acts on school premises, or violation of lawful school regulations, or the substantial disruption of the orderly operation of the school” may be prohibited, according to the state code.

“That’s why the statute is written, to prevent that kind of subjective opinion by a superintendent,” DeKoven said.

He added that Genochio could win damages comparable to the $22,000 settlement awarded students at Fallbrook High School who were suspended for publishing statements in an underground school newspaper that administrators considered libelous and obscene. DeKoven helped represent the students in the Fallbrook case.

Robert Anastas, founder of the national Students Against Drunk Driving organization in Marlboro, Mass., said that he believes T-shirt beer advertisements do not hurt school efforts to curb alcohol abuse, though as a former educator he supported Carroll’s efforts to enforce an existing regulation.

“It is as if I said to a student, ‘I don’t want you to bring a book cover with a naval insignia on it because that promotes war,’ ” Anastas said. “You see how far I can carry that?”

But Phyllis Crosthwaite, president of the San Diego County chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, said she agreed with the policy because high school students are too young to drink alcohol and should not wear shirts advertising it.

Attorney Greg Genochio does not believe that the shirts promote beer use, but said that, if they do, they are only a small part of all advertising.

“The shirts depict beer logos which are readily observable on and off campus,” he said. “ . . . They would also have to purge similar beer logos from every other place, including magazines that they might find in the waiting room of the principal’s office.”

Genochio said that he has asked the district to rescind the policy, but because Pyle has not responded in several weeks, he is preparing a claim against the district. If that is unsuccessful in producing a settlement, he would file a lawsuit, Genochio said.