Supreme Court burping case may hinge on Neil Gorsuch dissent

WASHINGTON - One of Neil Gorsuch’s sharpest dissents as an appeals court judge came just six months before he was nominated for the Supreme Court.

That’s when he sided with a New Mexico seventh-grader who was handcuffed and arrested after his teacher said the student had disrupted gym class with fake burps.

Nearly a year later, Gorsuch sits on the nation’s highest court and the boy’s mother is asking the justices to take up her appeal. She’s using Gorsuch’s words to argue that she has a right to sue the officer who arrested her son.

The court could act as early as Monday, either to deny the case or take more time to decide.

Justices typically withdraw from cases they heard before joining the Supreme Court, which means Gorsuch probably would not have any role in considering this one. But that hasn’t stopped lawyers for the mother from featuring his stinging dissent prominently in legal papers. Gorsuch said arresting a “class clown” for burping was going “a step too far.”

Whether the Supreme Court ultimately takes the case or not may have nothing to do with Gorsuch. The justices have repeatedly turned away disputes over school disciplinary policies. The appeal comes as some school districts have been rolling back “zero tolerance” discipline policies that expanded in the 1990s. The New Mexico incident began in 2011 when the student, known only as F.M. in court papers, kept interrupting his physical education class with fake burps. The teacher sent him into the hallway, where he continued burping and laughing as he leaned into the classroom entrance.

The teacher called for assistance on her school radio, and soon Arthur Acosta, a police officer assigned to the school, arrived in the hallway, according to court documents.

Acosta took the boy to the school’s office, then placed him under arrest for violating a New Mexico law that prohibits anyone from disrupting the education process.

Acosta handcuffed the student and took him to the juvenile detention center, where the boy stayed about an hour until he was picked up.

His mother, Annette Montano, sued school officials and police, arguing that arresting her 13-year-old son was unreasonable under the law. A federal judge ruled against her.

The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that the officer was immune from liability because he did not violate clearly established law.