School officials who blocked a suspended student from addressing other students to defend himself against allegations he had voiced a racial slur during a day of mourning for a dead Hispanic student are shielded from suit, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled yesterday.
The circuit said the officials had qualified immunity because they had shown there was a “significant probability that the school would be disrupted” had they allowed Daniel DeFabio to return to East Hampton High School and disavow the statement to an assembly or over the school’s public address system.
