Students' drinking suspensions overturned

CINCINNATI (AP) -- A judge has ruled that 17 students from a suburban high school shouldn't have been suspended for drinking beer during a trip to Germany last March.
Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge Mark Schweikert concluded this week that Mariemont school officials failed to clearly warn students and parents that drinking alcohol during the school-sponsored trip would be punished.
Parents insisted that during a meeting before the trip to Munich, they were led to believe the students would be exposed to beer drinking because it is part of the German culture. The legal drinking age in Germany is 16.
"Knowing of the likelihood of such exposure while in Germany, where this behavior is legal and accepted, the [school] failed to adequately communicate to the students or their parents its specific requirements regarding alcohol consumption and the sanctions that would be applied," the judge said in his ruling.
The school board argued that the trip was a school-related activity, so its code of conduct for students applied. When students returned from the 12-day trip, school officials met them at the airport and informed them that they had broken the rules.
Attorney Gary Winters, who represents the school board, said an appeal is likely.
Attorney Richard Ward, who filed the lawsuit on behalf of two of the students, said the ruling "means what we knew all along, which was the kids didn't do anything their parents hadn't authorized them to do, and the school was wrong in punishing them."
Following hearings, the school board reduced 15 of the suspensions to community service. Ward said the judge's ruling means that all the sanctions should be erased from students' records.
The suspensions were first challenged in U.S. District Court in Cincinnati.
A judge dismissed that lawsuit last May, saying the students' constitutional rights weren't violated by the suspensions.