Skank and tramp remarks = free speech.

Both sides are claiming victories in a federal court ruling involving Alexander Smith, a former Michigan high school student who made lewd and vulgar remarks about school personnel over lunch one day in the school cafeteria.

U.S. District Court Judge David M. Lawson of the Eastern District of Michigan says the Mount Pleasant school district's "verbal assault" policy that Smith was accused of violating, and a state law on which it was based, were "unconstitutionally vague and overbroad."

That pleases the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed the lawsuit against the Mount Pleasant Public Schools on behalf of Smith and his parents. They contend Smith's conduct was protected as free speech under the First Amendment.

But Lawson also says the school system had a right to discipline Smith for his conduct, which it did, and does not have to delete the incident from his school record. That satisfies Mount Pleasant Schools Superintendent Gary Allen, who says, "We feel we won."

Smith, then a junior at Mount Pleasant High School, was eating lunch with friends in October 2000 when he read aloud a three-page commentary criticizing his school's policy on tardiness. He named some "teacher gestapos," who, he believed, supported it. He also called the school principal a "skank" and "tramp" while alleging that she had an affair with another principal, whom she later married. Smith made other remarks about an assistant principal's sexuality.

The principal charged Smith with verbal assault and suspended him for 10 days, later reduced to eight The Mount Pleasant Board of Education upheld the suspension, and the ACLU initiated the court challenge.

"It's unfortunate that our client isn't going to have Iris record expunged, but we won on the big issue," declares Kary Moss, executive director of the ACLU in Michigan. She says the case presented "some classic First Amendment questions."

Kenneth Trump, president of National School Safety and Security Services, a Cleveland-based consulting firm, suggests that generally, "if a student disagrees with a school policy and communicates so in an appropriate, non-disruptive forum and manner, it would be hard to justify suspending the child." He agrees, however, that the language Smith used is "clearly separate from a professional, tactful disagreement over a school policy" and "would appear to merit some type of discipline."

Allen says the school district is rewriting its verbal assault policy to give it "more definition." Smith, meanwhile, graduated from Mount Pleasant High School in June 2002 and now attends Michigan State University.