Student jokes about shooting up his school, parents are suing the district for violating his free speech

The parents of an Arizona high school boy have sued their school district for violating his free speech rights and denying him due process.

The drama for Curtis and Karalee Merrill began in October of last year after their straight-A son received a bad grade on an assignment from his Marana High School teacher.

Karalee, the mother, responded by suggesting the boy email his teacher and ask her what he could do to raise his grade.

While typing out the email, the boy allegedly grew nervous and wrote something he shouldn’t have, according to The Arizona Republic.

“‘Mister, mister, I want to date your sister,’ Skibidi toilet my grade is in the toilet. GANG, GANG, GIMME A BETTER GRADE OR I SHOOT UP DA SKOOL HOMIE.”

Here’s the catch: He never sent the email. Instead, he deleted it after his mom saw it.

“He always starts out typing some just ridiculous things,” she later told local station KOLD. “I think it’s his process. I don’t know if it helps him get serious.”

(Video Credit: Arizona’s Family)

There was just one problem. He wrote the email on a school-issued laptop that contained artificial intelligence-driven, “Big Brother” monitoring software that caught and recorded everything he’d written.

“School administrators saw it within an hour,” the Republic notes. “The Merrills’ son was suspended by the end of the day. The principal delivered the news in a late-night voicemail.”

“Principal Caitlyn Kauffman gave [him] a 10-day suspension, then told him to attend a hearing for a potential long-term suspension. The district hearing officer gave him a 45-day suspension but said it could be shortened to 11 days if he agreed to three therapy sessions,” according to the Republic.

The family then appealed the suspension, but Joshua Bayne, the district’s executive director of state and federal programs, insisted that their son’s “subjective intent does not change the fact that it was reasonable to foresee that [his] words would cause fear in others.”

They then appealed again, prompting district Superintendent Daniel Streeter to uphold the suspension but slightly decrease its length.

It was at this point that the Merrills sued.

“There’s no indication the school believed this student’s speech constituted a threat,” attorney Aaron Baumann told local station KTVK. “A student speaking at home talking about school violence cannot be subject to school discipline if that speech does not indicate a real threat to the school.”

He further stressed that the Merrills don’t have a problem with the AI monitoring software itself, but with the punishment that was handed out.

“The most important aspect is that he was at home and what he typed did not constitute a credible threat,” he insisted.

That being said, this software is reportedly part of a rapidly expanding trend all across the country. And concerns about students getting caught up like the Merrills’ son did — they’re not uncommon either.

Welcome to the United States of SURVEILLANCE – where Big Brother isn’t fiction, it’s school policy

According to Associated Press, American children are growing up in a world where every word they type on a school device is read, flagged, and sometimes punished — by AI spy… pic.twitter.com/3XhLjYeNP9

— Andromeda11711 (@Andromeda11711) August 9, 2025

“It’s not uncommon that the first time a parent or student learns about (monitoring software) is when they are on the receiving end of some type of action, either from the school or even law enforcement,” Elizabeth Laird, the director of equity in civil technology at the Center for Democracy and Technology, told the Republic.

But Deer Valley Unified School District Deputy Superintendent Gary Zehrbach insisted to KTVK that the software has been helpful in identifying potential threats.

“One of our most important duties as a school district is to ensure the safety of our students,” he said. “So when students are living in the digital and virtual world, I do believe it’s important that we have pieces in place that can help alert us if there’s something we need to know so we can help our students.”

Over in the Arizona town of Gilbert meanwhile, the school district’s technology officer Jon Castelhano wrote in a blog post in May that the software alerted them to a student with suicidal intent, and that thanks to this alert, caregivers were “actually able to go up to the student’s bedroom, intervene, and get help for them immediately.”

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V. Saxena is a staff writer for BizPac Review with a decade of experience as a professional writer, and a lifetime of experience as an avid news junkie. He holds a degree in computer technology from Purdue University.

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