Teen battles school's Confederate flag ban

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. - Tommy DeFoe wore his Southern pride on his Confederate flag belt buckle yesterday as he argued in federal court that a school dress code banning such items violated his free speech rights.

"I am fighting for my heritage and my rights as a Southerner and an American," said the lanky DeFoe, 18, during a break in his trial.

DeFoe says his great-great uncle served in the Confederate army and "died for the South" in the Civil War. But heritage was not the issue for Anderson County school officials who suspended DeFoe more than 40 times before he received his certificate of completion from the county vocational school last fall.

DeFoe's trial, which began Monday and is being heard by an all-white jury, is the latest in a string of cases across the South since the 1990s challenging dress codes that banned Confederate flag apparel: a prom gown in Kentucky, purses in Texas, and T-shirts in Kentucky, South Carolina, and Georgia. But it is unusual for such cases to go to a jury trial. Most were settled with a payment to the plaintiffs, said DeFoe attorney Kirk Lyons, who has been involved in many of the cases as chief trial lawyer for the North Carolina-based Southern Legal Resource Center. Others were thrown out by the judge.