It’s Illegal For Leftist Agitators To Encourage High School Walkouts

In an affluent suburb of Milwaukee in mid-January, dozens of students left school in the middle of the day to protest actions by federal immigration authorities to detain and deport people in the U.S. illegally. Similar walkouts have been staged recently in Minneapolis, Oregon, Long Island, and elsewhere. And over the past few years, walkouts to protest against Israel were organized in Montgomery County, San Francisco, Chicago, Seattle, and Boston, among other places. It’s fair to say that groups of students leaving school in left-leaning communities to advocate for leftist concerns has become a regular feature of the educational landscape.

But these walkouts are typically not the spontaneous result of students seeking to express themselves. In almost all cases, these walkouts are encouraged, organized, or at a minimum facilitated by adults. To the extent that adults enable students to leave school so they can engage in political activism, they are in danger of violating the law.

Let’s consider the recent walkout in the Milwaukee suburb of Shorewood, Wisconsin. Being absent from school without a valid excuse is considered truancy, which is prohibited by Wisconsin law. Wisconsin law also forbids contributing to truancy, which “is violated by any person 17 years of age or older who, by any act or omission, knowingly encourages or contributes to the truancy of a child.”

Two state representatives, Darrin Madison and Ryan Clancy, joined the students in their walkout and made speeches to the small crowd, praising them for their action. They led the group in chanting “stand up, fight back” and “abolish ICE.” While these political expressions are certainly protected speech, encouraging students to leave school by joining them and praising them would very likely constitute contributing to truancy. At a minimum, failing to tell them that they legally should be in school would be an omission that contributed to truancy.

The leaders of the Shorewood School District may also have contributed to this truancy. While the district sent a letter to parents saying that the school did not sponsor the walkout, the letter did offer that “parents could excuse their students for the walkout by calling the attendance office.” The district offered this option despite declaring on its website that “regular attendance is a key part of student success in the Shorewood School District.” District policy lists examples of permitted “Parent-Excused Pre-Planned Absence,” such as medical appointments or attending a funeral, but participating in a political demonstration is not among those excused absences.

Some might argue that complying with technical requirements to attend school pales in comparison to the broader issues facing our country. The protesting students obviously think so, as one said: “The mark that me and like my fellow students can leave on the world I think is much more important than, you know, like another day of AP physics and creative writing.”

But these students are children, and children are not entitled to decide whether chanting “abolish ICE” is more important than learning physics and writing. Adults have to make these decisions on their behalf. And adults have enshrined their decisions in laws that compel children to attend school and forbid other adults from undermining that.

Despite these laws, it is very tempting for adults wishing to advance political agendas to mobilize impressionable children for their causes. As one of the student speakers at the protest emphasized, perhaps with some hyperbole, “America’s youth is the best organizing tool there is.” The youth are an attractive enough tool that some adults will be tempted to violate the law to wield it. It is the responsibility of other adults to call them out for these violations, enforce the law, and ensure that our children are focused on their education rather than on being used as pawns in the political battles of grown-ups.

Jay P. Greene is a senior fellow at the Defense of Freedom Institute.