NAPA, Calif. (AP) - A seventh-grader might end up in court for wearing Winnie the Pooh socks to school. Toni Kay Scott, 14, was sent to an in-school suspension program called Students With Attitude Problems last year for violating a dress code, according to a lawsuit against the Napa Valley Unified School District and Redwood Middle School.

 

She had donned socks with the Tigger character from the Winnie the Pooh cartoons on them, along with a denim skirt and a brown shirt with a pink border.

 

But the school's policy requires students to wear clothes with solid colors in blue, white, green, yellow, khaki, gray, brown and black. Permitted fabrics are cotton twill, corduroy and chino. No denim is allowed.

 

The lawsuit, filed Monday in Napa County Superior Court by The American Civil Liberties Union and a law firm on the girl's behalf, alleges that the dress code is unconstitutionally vague and too restrictive.

 

"We should be able to show everyone who we are and have a way to express ourselves, as long as we aren't showing off things that shouldn't be shown off at school," the teenager said in a statement.

 

The lawsuit said the policy goes too far and forces aesthetic conformity in the name of safety. The rules violate the California Education Code, said plaintiffs' attorney Sharon O'Grady.

 

A telephone message left Tuesday at Redwood Middle School was not immediately returned.

Oh boy, don't you just LOVE the absurd mound of bureaucracy we call the standards that justify the even worse rules made to run the hectic, hateful place we know as the world? Seriously. They gave this girl a severe punishment and put her in some program for "kids with attitude problems"? Just because she wore some colorful socks with a cartoon character from a nonviolent, people-friendly show/franchise? That's just WRONG. The dress code is incredibly STUPID too. How could ANYBODY think that was fair? It does nothing to help anybody, and it looks like it's just there to take up space and make the school officials look smart or impressive. Yeah, one of those "Let's tackle something that isn't the real problem at all and say we did so we don't look like the incompetent, blithering dolts we actually happen to be!" moments. Civil liberties are more than likely not just rolling in their graves, but having whole epileptic seizures.

I'm home alone right now... My dad's in Cambridge, my mom and sister are at a variety show at her school, and here I am alone. I won't be able to get some art I had planned on scanning up for my art topic... Rar. I'll be playing Warcraft, I guess.

I'm listening to the Marilyn Manson cover of David Bowie's Golden Years.