Legal Question in Constitutional Law in New York

Re: Violation of First Amendment rights with minors

Some Constitutional rights of minors are more limited than those of adults.

You should note that the Constitutional limits on what a public school can do generally do not apply to private schools. If you attend a private school it is very unlikely that anything the officials have done violated your First Amendment rights, though their actions may have violated other laws.

The type of damages which a plaintiff can obtain for violation of First Amendment rights will depend heavily upon the facts of the case. Since you have provided no facts, I can't begin to say what sort of damages might be appropriate if you go to court and win.

I also can't say whether your rights actually have been violated. Keep in mind that you don't have the same rights to free speech in a public school as you do in the outside world. School officials have the authority to impose some rules -- including some rules limiting students' speech and assembly rights -- on their students which the government could not impose upon others. Whether your rights were violated thus depends upon what happened, and if your conclusion that they were is based upon non-school cases you may very well be wrong.

Re: Violation of First Amendment rights with minors

You need to specify which of the rights guaranteed by the 1st Amendment you are speaking of, and give more factual details. There have been many decisions and rulings on very particularized fact patterns and they vary on a case by case basis.

You also seem to have some notions backwards. A minor has less of a right to exercise 1st Amendment rights in a school setting, then an adult would in public. For example, a minor yelling curse words in class has no protection because it is disruptive to the class as a whole and keeping decorum in school is more important. There are time, place and manner restrictions on certain types of "speech" and other first amendment activity that have been upheld as not being unconstitutional, and other restrictions that are violative.