Neal Morton reports that a school district is seeking court permission to release a student’s private farewell notes. The district’s motion, within the context of defending a lawsuit against them stemming from the student’s suicide, raises questions of privacy:
The Clark County School District hopes to win favor in the court of public opinion with the unsealing of several farewell letters that a 13-year-old student wrote to her younger brother and peers before she killed herself two years ago.
But Hailee Lamberth’s parents, who sued the district last year after discovering their seventh-grade daughter suffered months of bullying at White Middle School in Henderson, fear public access to her handwritten notes would harm the emotional stability of their surviving son and the other children named in the letters.
Read more about the case on Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Not surprisingly, I agree with Khaliah Barnes of EPIC. Khaliah is quoted in the story as suggesting that public disclosure of these messages is not necessary to the district’s defense, and attempts to disclose these sensitive messages only makes the district appear insensitive.