East Bay district, exstudent settle suit for $665,000

An East Bay school district has agreed to pay $665,000 to settle a freespeech suit by a former student who was suspended from a leadership class, and briefly barred from serving as student body president, after posting a video that showed him as a James Bond hero fighting off terrorists, the youth’s lawyers said Tuesday.

The video by Nathaniel Yu was a parody, and the supposed terrorists were played by two of Yu’s Muslim friends, his lawyers said in announcing the settlement with the San Ramon Valley Unified School District. They said district officials falsely described the production as hate speech, and that the ensuing publicity led to threats of violence against Yu.

In an apology that was part of the settlement, the district said the video was not hate speech and that it “regrets the negative consequences associated with mischaracterizations regarding you and the content of the video.” But Mark Davis, a lawyer for the district, said the apology was only for the harm that Yu suffered, and the settlement does not include any admission of violating the youth’s rights.

Yu was a 17yearold junior at San Ramon Valley High School in Danville and president of his junior class, when he and some friends posted the video in February 2017, as he was running for student body president. It showed him as a hero saving fellow students from terrorists.

The participants improvised their lines, without a script, and intended the video as entertainment, the youth’s lawyers said. They said it was posted for about 12 hours, and viewed by about 30 people, before Yu took it down at the suggestion of another student who said some might find it offensive.

But a teacher obtained the video and showed it to other instructors and administrators, who told Yu the posting was racist and violated rules against inappropriate material during a school election campaign, the lawyers said. Yu was removed as junior class president, suspended from the school’s leadership class and disqualified as a candidate for student body president.

School officials revoked those punishments three months later, and Yu — who had previously apologized, at officials’ request, for any “misconceptions and misinterpretations” of his video — won the election and served as student president during his senior year.

But his lawsuit said a teacher told news media and Muslim groups that Yu had disparaged Muslims and refused to apologize. His reputation was trashed in social media, and his school parking spot was vandalized twice on his first day of class in August 2017, his lawyers said.

U.S. District Judge Maxine Chesney of San Francisco refused to dismiss Yu’s suit in November 2019 and said his allegations, if proven, might show violations of free speech and racial discrimination.

In a statement released by his lawyers Tuesday, Yu, now a college student, said, “No one should be subjected to what my family and I have been forced to endure. As a child of immigrants, I am constantly reminded that we cannot take our civil rights for granted.”