Student plans to keep fighting

by from the charleston daily mail



update on anti-war teen in west virginia

Carrie Smith csmith@dailymail.com>

Daily Mail staff

from www.daily mail.com

Wednesday November 28, 2001; 12:52 PM

The lawyer for the Sissonville High student suspended last month for trying to start an anarchy club at school said his client would continue to fight to have her club and wear anarchy T-shirts even though she no longer attends school and the state Supreme Court refused to hear her case.

"She's very disappointed," Roger Forman said about his client, 15-year-old Katie Sierra. "She and her mother feel this fight is about our freedoms and they are not willing to back down."

Forman said he is considering taking the case to a federal court because of the "immediacy" of the situation.

"Her Constitutional right to free speech is being violated every day that she can't wear the shirts," he said.

Sierra's mother pulled her out of Sissonville High school earlier this week because students were harassing her daughter, pushing her into lockers and spitting on her.

Sierra will complete her assignments at home through a computer-learning program paid for by the school system.

Forman said Katie Sierra would have gone back to school if the high court had granted her request for a preliminary injunction allowing her to wear the shirts and start the club.

The vote from the court Tuesday afternoon was 3-2 with Justices Robin Davis and Larry Starcher voting to hear the case.

Sierra was appealing a Nov. 2 decision by Kanawha Circuit Judge James Stucky. He sided with the school board on the grounds that certain rights could be infringed upon in the public school system if they disrupted the learning process for the majority of the students.

The case is still pending in Kanawha Circuit Court and a conference has been scheduled for Dec. 5 in Stucky's court.