A Sterling High School student is suing the school district and its administration after she claims she was banned from her prom and senior trip for tweeting profane comments about the principal, according to the

.

In a federal lawsuit, the 17-year-old student identified as H.W., claims that her First Amendment rights were violated when the district allegedly checked her Twitter account and then disciplined her for "purely off-campus speech" in which she called her principal a name in a tweet to her friends. Principal Mark Napoleon of Woodbury and Superintendent Jack McCulley are also named in the suit.

The Laurel Springs student alleges the district punished her for that specific comment — and not for another tweet about smoking before school, which the district would likely allege was the reason for punishment, according to the claim. Six days after the tweet — which she said she sent at home after school — H.W. was banned from attending her senior prom, senior class trip and from walking during graduation, according to court documents.

The girl also alleges that the district is discriminating against her because of her disabilities, including Oppositional Defiant Disorder and bi-polar disorder — disabilities that caused her to say the things that she did, according to the lawsuit. ODD is characterized by "oppositional behavior and difficulty with authority," the lawsuit explains.

The student is asking a judge to intervene and allow her to participate in the activities that she's been banned from, apologize to her, and create a new policy that would make it clear that the district's administrators "have no authority to regulate, discipline, detain or search students based on constitutionally protected, off-campus, non-school event speech that does not cause a substantial disruption at school," according to court documents.

"It's an important social issue," H.W.'s lawyer Jerry Tanenbaum told the Courier-Post. "We're talking about government officials being able to impose consequences on people for the things they say. ... From my perspective, they're acting as much like teenagers as she is."

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