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Police Officer Gets 100k Because Son Was Shown A Pulitzer Prize Winner's Art

Nobody thought this case was worth fighting?

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grad cap moneyA family has created a new way to grow a money tree: they recently recouped $100k stemming from their child being shown a music video in class. CTInsider has coverage:

A Connecticut town has finalized a $100,000 settlement to resolve a lawsuit that claims the son of a police officer suffered emotional distress — and claims his parents were forced to pay tuition costs to move the child to another school — after the student’s eighth grade class was shown a video featuring Kendrick Lamar.

Following unanimous approval, with one abstention, by the Town Council last week, Vernon’s Board of Education unanimously agreed to finalize the settlement Monday night.

If you haven’t seen the video yourself and would like some additional context, you can watch it here. Not signed in to a YouTube account? Don’t worry — despite having over 174 million views the platform found no need to lock watching it behind any sort of age verification like they do the actually potentially traumatic content on the site.

As a result of showing the video, the lawsuit alleges, the student sustained emotional and psychological injuries and distress, including post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression, shock, confusion, sadness, feeling unsafe, and social withdrawal, some or all of which necessitate psychological treatment and counseling and, if unresolved, pose the risk of severe mental illness.

Along with physical manifestations that include nausea, headaches, and malaise, the student is also alleged to have been stigmatized for being the child of a police officer, which caused friends and others to disassociate with him, according to the lawsuit.

Who knew rap videos were that powerful? It is worth noting that this settlement arguable reached more success than the decades of litigation seeking redress for the living survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. If only a music video was being shown at the height of the carnage, maybe then those victims would have been entitled to some relief.

Connecticut Town Finalizes $100K Settlement For Showing Kendrick Lamar Video In School [CTInsider]

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Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s.  He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at cwilliams@abovethelaw.com and by tweet at @WritesForRent.

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