Boys’ acne masks not blackface, suit says
School forced out teens over photo without proper inquiry, families say
“The School perceived that the photograph was blackface and was harmful and damaging to the School community and that the School needed to take disciplinary action against Plaintiffs.” Statement by St. Francis high school attorney Nicholas Ma in December court filing
A pair of teenage boys and their parents are seeking $20 million in a lawsuit against an exclusive Catholic high school in Mountain View, saying school officials forced the boys out last year over an alleged blackface photo that they say actually showed acne medication.
The selfie photo, showing the two former St. Francis students and a third boy with their faces covered in painted masks of dark green, went viral amid last year’s racial reckoning, prompting outrage from administrators and some other parents. The boys’ families said the school offered a choice: leave or be expelled.
If the boys left on their own, the suit states, administrators would not tell prospective transfer schools what had happened. But the parents insisted it was all a big mistake. Their boys, they said, had taken the photo three years earlier at the age of 14, not out of racial animus but as a joke.
As described in a lawsuit being fought in Santa Clara County Superior Court, one of the boys had acne and spread a light green mask on his face before two friends followed in
“A photograph of this innocent event was plucked from obscurity and grossly mischaracterized during the height of nationwide social unrest.” Statement by the boys and their families released through their attorney
solidarity. When the masks dried, the lawsuit states, the color darkened and the three took a selfie — a decision that would ultimately upend their lives when the photo spread and pitched the affluent Peninsula campus into turmoil.
While two of the boys’ families say St. Francis mishandled the situation, and are seeking damages for defamation and breach of contract, the school says it had “sole discretion” to punish the two students and that the families left voluntarily in June. In court filings, the school’s attorney says administrators disagreed with the families’ explanation that the photo was innocent.
“The School perceived that the photograph was blackface and was harmful and damaging to the School community and that the School needed to take disciplinary action against Plaintiffs,” attorney Nicholas Ma wrote in a December court filing.
The suit, filed in August, comes at a time of tension across society as the nation confronts how systemic, often unchecked racism has bred inequality and turned settings like schools and workplaces into oppressive atmospheres.
While the boys’ intent is at issue in the St. Francis case, many schools have wrestled with how harshly to address behavior by young people that harms people of color. And schools themselves have often faced criticism for breeding or tolerating bigotry over the years.
Last week in Sacramento, leaders of another Catholic high school — also called St. Francis — said they disciplined a sophomore girl for using blackface to bully a fellow student. The girl used Snapchat’s paint feature to mimic blackface in a photo that spread virally, the Sacramento Bee reported, prompting a group of Black parents to seek the girl’s expulsion and highlight what they said was a history of racism at the school.
A school spokesperson told The Chronicle the girl was “no longer enrolled,” though it was unclear whether she was expelled.
“Any time we are talking about race and racism, it’s challenging for our institutions,” Harry Lawson, director of the National Education Association’s Human and Civil Rights Department, said in an interview. “It does get difficult. Particularly, when you’re working for transformative change.”
Blackface persists despite its use for more than 200 years to stereotype and discriminate against Black people. Politicians, entertainers and others continue to be caught wearing it, prompting apologies. Lawson noted that blackface images have been some of the most incendiary in discussions about racism because they are “a caricature of a group of people meant to dehumanize them.”
The boys, identified by their initials H.H. and A.H. in court records, joined their parents in suing the Mountain View school and its president, Jason Curtis, alleging that they came to a conclusion about the photo for the wrong reasons and without adequate investigation.
According to the suit, the principal told the families that the decision to remove two of the boys — the third attended a different school and is not involved with the lawsuit — was based on “optics.” The episode came weeks after the police killing of George Floyd ignited nationwide protests. The boys allege they were threatened, lost friends and had to move out of the community, with one going out of state to continue playing sports.
The suit accuses the school of inconsistently addressing accusations of racism by students, keeping them quiet at times or choosing to “scapegoat students” if it “would be better for the school or administration’s public perception and ability to collect monetary contributions.”
“This lawsuit is our attempt to redeem our names and reputations, and to correct the record to reflect the truth of what actually happened,” the boys and their families said in a statement their attorney released to The Chronicle. “A photograph of this innocent event was plucked from obscurity and grossly mischaracterized during the height of nationwide social unrest.”
In January, a judge denied a motion to dismiss the suit, saying there was sufficient evidence “that Defendants may have acted negligently.” Judge Thang Barrett ruled that even though the school president didn’t name the boys in public statements, they were identifiable, and there was no evidence of an investigation by administrators.
The judge dismissed the plaintiffs’ defamation charge against a St. Francis student’s mother who shared the alleged blackface photo while organizing a march at the school, saying she had broad freespeech immunity. The mom has said she was not aware of the acne mask story. That decision is under appeal.
The lawsuit states that in August 2017, the boy referred to as A.H., then 14 and suffering from severe adolescent acne, applied the green mask, bought by his mother. He had taken a photo of himself and another boy in a white acne mask the day before. His friend, H.H., and another unnamed friend, referred to as Minor III, also applied the green medication as a show of support and because they thought it looked “silly,” according to the suit.
They snapped the photo showing the shirtless boys in a bathroom. One flashed rock ’n’ roll horns with his hand. All three of their faces were covered in dark green.
At the time of the photo, A.H. and H.H. didn’t know of the term “blackface,” the lawsuit says. The photo would have stayed private, except Minor III shared the picture with a female friend, Minor IV, unbeknownst to his friends. In October 2017, that girl attached a copy of the photo to a music playlist on her Spotify account, and it sat there for more than two years.
Last June 3, hours before the photo resurfaced, a racist George Floyd meme, created by recent St. Francis graduates, circulated on an Instagram account called Obama_memes, sparking calls to punish the creators and followers of the account.
It was not the school’s first brush with racism. In 2017, baseball players were caught writing racist slurs on a locker room white board; in 2019 a girl was racially bullied; and last year, a lacrosse player was suspended after taunting a Native American opponent as “Squanto,” according to the lawsuit. The school did not respond to questions about the incidents.
As outrage grew, another student, “Minor V,” according to the lawsuit, pulled the alleged blackface photo off the girl’s Spotify account and uploaded it to a group chat, naming the boys and saying the image was another example of racism at the school. That student urged others to share the photo, which quickly spread via Snapchat.
That night, A.H. started receiving threatening emails and messages from students. He spent the night trying to explain the context of the photo, the lawsuit says.
The next morning, the school sent an email condemning the Obama_memes Instagram account, promising to hold the creators and followers accountable. A dean called the boys’ parents, who tried to explain that they were wearing acne masks, the lawsuit states.
On June 5, Principal Katie Teekell phoned H.H.’s parents and said their son was not welcome back to the school, the lawsuit says. His father again referenced the acne masks. She replied, according to the lawsuit, that “this isn’t about intent, it’s about optics.”
In a June 17 letter to the boys’ attorney, Paul Gaspari, the lawyer for the school, said the decision was not about optics, but that the photo’s “disrespect was so severe as to warrant immediate dismissal.”
“Your clients, or their friends, are responsible for the posting of the photograph on social media and the resultant publicity and unfortunate consequences,” Gaspari wrote.
Meanwhile, according to court records, the parent of a mixedrace student at the school, who alleged her child had been subject to racism on campus, shared the photo as part of a planned march at the school against, among other things, “kids participating in blackface and thinking that this is all a joke.” The school expressed support for the march.
“What I can tell you is that we have been thorough in our investigation, we have issued extremely serious consequences, and we continue to communicate with our students that racist behavior is unacceptable,” Assistant Principal Meighan Friedsam emailed the mother before the protest. “We support the protest efforts that are happening.”
The mother and her attorney did not return requests for comment. In her sworn declaration, the mother explained how she had gotten involved over concerns about racism at Peninsula schools and St. Francis.
“The racist Obama_memes account and meme mocking George Floyd’s death and the reports that SFHS students were painting their faces black made me worry about my daughter and what sort of school environment that SFHS was providing, particularly as there had been previous racist incidents at SFHS,” she said.
At the protest, she called for the boys’ expulsion. Curtis participated and spoke to a Mountain View Voice reporter, saying that in addition to the Instagram posts, administrators found an incident involving “blackface.” Those students, he said, would face “serious consequences.” The boys’ families hired an attorney who again alerted administrators to the acnemask explanation, but the school would not budge, the suit says.
“The School has a right to make a determination that your clients’ behavior was an expression of gross disrespect to communities of color and was contrary to the mission and philosophy of St. Francis High School,” Gaspari wrote on June 17.
The parents decided to sign voluntary withdrawal paperwork. The school sent them a reimbursement check for some money they had paid toward tuition. The check was dated June 6, 13 days before the families agreed to leave, showing no real investigation had taken place, said the boy’s attorney, Krista Baughman.
“There were only four business hours between when the school first contacted our clients about the face mask photograph, and the time the school informed our clients that they would not be allowed to return,” Baughman told The Chronicle.
The next month, the school backed off its promise to keep the incident quiet with potential transfer schools. Principal Teekell emailed the family to say the school would be “honest” if asked by another school what happened. Teekell and Friedsam did not respond to requests for comment via email.
Curtis said he could not comment on the case because of student privacy laws and the pending litigation, but touted the school’s 2019 social justice and equity team, designed to lead efforts to creating an antioppressive climate and structure on campus. “St. Francis High School is committed to creating an educational environment where all students feel safe, welcome, and included,” he wrote in an email.
H.H. is finishing his senior year in high school in Utah so he can continue to play sports and pursue a college scholarship. His parents rotate back and forth between residences in the two states. In the lawsuit, he alleges difficulty sleeping, confusion and stress over his academic future.
A.H. suffered despair and anxiety and feared for his safety, according to the lawsuit. The family moved to a county a threehour drive away, where the teenager is finishing his senior year distancelearning.