Texas Dad Sues Son's Classmates and Their Parents, Accusing Students of Cyberbullying

A group of middle-school students and their parents are being sued by a San Antonio man who accuses his son's classmates of spreading online gossip alleging his son was planning an attack on their school.The suit filed by Derek Rothschild seeks $50,000 in damages and aims to identify unnamed students at San Antonio's Tex Hill Middle School who launched the rumors last month, the Amarillo Globe-News reported.The lawsuit is the first to cite David's Law, 2017 legislation that lays out specific rules for schools responding to cyberbullying attacks. The law is named for a cyberbullied Texas high-schooler who took his own life in 2016.Those rules were not followed by the North East Independent School District, Rothschild's lawyer, Justin Nichols, said, saying the gossip was "mean-spirited, wholly false and intended to hurt" the 14-year-old eighth-grader.According to the suit, the boy's classmates posted claims of a planned attack on social media, claims found to be without merit by school investigators.The San Antonio Express-News reported that according to the suit, the student was ostracized, ridiculed, taunted and eventually sent to alternative school for the remainder of the school year despite the investigators' findings.District officials refused to name the students involved but said they had been disciplined.In citing David's Law, the suit says the district failed to clear his son's name and did not provide him with the required counseling and resources.District spokeswoman Aubrey Chancellor said officials responded appropriately."The district made it clear at the beginning of the school year that all threats against schools would be subject to disciplinary action," Chancellor said.  Continue reading...