TRI In The News
Student Fighting Student ID Rule Appeals to Higher Court
From My San Antonio
Original article available here
Attorneys for the Rutherford Institute on Thursday filed an appeal to the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans on behalf of a John Jay High school student who refuses to wear a student ID badge to protest Northside Independent School District's radio frequency tracking system.
A federal judge ruled Tuesday that Northside can transfer Andrea Hernandez, 15, from her magnet school, rejecting a lawsuit brought by her and her father, Steven Hernandez. They have argued that the tracking system violates her constitutional rights and religious beliefs and have testified they consider the badges to be the “mark of the beast” described in the biblical book of Revelation.
The Rutherford Institute is a Virginia-based nonprofit civil liberties organization.
The appeal asks that Andrea be permitted to continue attending the science and engineering magnet school at Jay until the case is decided.
The badges contain a chip used to track students' on-campus whereabouts, but Northside ISD officials had offered to let her wear it without the chip and reassigned her to Taft High School, her regular neighborhood school, when she refused.
The district estimates its legal bill in the case will be in the tens of thousands of dollars, a cost that will be borne by Northside ISD taxpayers. A district official said it will pursue recovering those costs from the plaintiff.
The district has been testing a “radio frequency identification,” or RFID, tracking system at Jones Middle School and Jay, with a combined 4,200 students.
State education funding is partly based on attendance and the technology allows the schools to identify students who are on campus but missed roll call. It it generates significant income the district might decide to install it at all 112 of its campuses.
