A short excerpt from Tuesday's long decision by Mississippi Court of Appeals Judge Anthony Lawrence in Price v. Hinds County School Dist.:
Toby Price, a licensed educator and assistant principal, read to the Gary Road Elementary School second-grade class on "Read Across America Day." Since the educator who was scheduled to read to the class did not appear on a Zoom session, Price—at the last minute—stepped in to read and selected a book entitled "I Need a New Butt!" from his personal collection. The picture book was intended to be humorous and depicted a child searching for a "new butt." As such, the book contained references to and illustrations of "butts," "butt cracks," and "farts." {The child imagines a litany of possibilities for his "new butt," such as "a butt that's armor-plated[,]" "a bumper butt made of chrome[,]" "[a] rocket butt[,]" an "arty-farty butt[,]" and "[a] robo-butt[.]" The book concludes with the child finding his father bending over to repair a sink only to discover his father's butt also had a crack in it.}
Following the reading, a student began repeating the word "butt" incessantly. Price was placed on administrative leave that day and fired two days later.
The court concluded that the firing decision "was arbitrary, capricious, and lacked substantial evidence," and was thus invalid under state law:
