Colorado judge bans graduates from wearing Mexican-American sash

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Judge Nina Y. Wang wrote that wearing a sash during a graduation ceremony falls under school-sponsored speech, not the student’s private speech. Therefore, “the school district is permitted, in its sole discretion, to limit this speech in the interest of the type of graduation it intends to deliver,” Wang wrote.

The verdict concerned the student’s request for an injunction that would have allowed her to wear the sash to graduation on Saturday because the case would not have been resolved in time. Wang noted that the student and her lawyers had not sufficiently demonstrated that they would be successful, but a final decision has yet to be made.

It’s the latest dispute in the US over what type of cultural graduation attire is allowed at graduation ceremonies, with many focusing on tribal regalia.

Attorneys for Naomi Peña Villasano argued in a hearing Friday in Denver that the school district’s decision violated her right to free speech. They also said that it was contradictory for the district to allow Native American clothing but not the Peña Villasano sash, which represented their heritage. The sash features the Mexican flag on one side and the United States flag on the other.

“I’m 200 percent American—100 percent American and 100 percent Mexican,” she said at a recent school board meeting in rural Western Slope, Colorado.

“The county discriminates against expressions of different cultural backgrounds,” her attorney, Kenneth Parreno, of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said at Friday’s hearing.

An attorney for Garfield County School District 16 countered that Native American insignia must be permitted in Colorado and is categorically distinct from wearing a country’s flag. Allowing Peña Villasano to wear the US and Mexican flags as a sash could “open the door to offensive material,” according to Holly Ortiz.

Ortiz further explained that the district did not want to prevent Peña Villasano from speaking and that the graduate could decorate her cap with the flags or wear the sash before or after the ceremony.

But “she has no right to put it the way she wants,” Ortiz said.

Wang sided with the district, noting that “the school district may permit one sash and ban another.”

Similar disputes erupted across the US this final season.

A Transgender girl filed lawsuit against a Mississippi school district that banned her from wearing a dress until graduation. In Oklahoma, a former Native American Student filed a lawsuit against a school district for removing a feather, a sacred religious object, from her cap before graduation in 2022.

What is considered appropriate graduation attire? was a source of conflict for Native American students across the country. Both Nevada and Oklahoma passed legislation Thursday allowing Native American students to wear religious and cultural regalia at graduation ceremonies.

This year, Colorado passed legislation making it illegal to ban Native American students from wearing such regalia. Almost a dozen states have similar laws.

The legal arguments often revolve around whether the First Amendment protects personal speech, in this case the sash, or if it is school-sponsored speech and could be restricted for educational purposes.

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Bedayn is a corps member of the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to cover undercover topics.