Hundreds of Maryland children are being arrested for disruptive school behavior under what advocates call an antiquated and discriminatory state law.

For the fourth year in a row, Delegate Sheila Ruth is sponsoring a bill to remove the school disruption charge from Maryland’s criminal code. This push comes as state lawmakers grapple with reforming the juvenile justice system, amid widespread concern about youth crime — despite data proving that it is decreasing in Maryland.

“These are situations where a student might be acting up a little bit, like teenagers sometimes do, they lose their temper and yell, or they refuse to change seats,” Ruth said. “There are internal processes for handling that. But instead, what's happening is kids are being arrested.”

Black children are 5.5 times more likely to be charged with disruptive school behavior. Students with disabilities are charged 3.3 times more often than their nondisabled peers — many times for behaviors identified by school officials in their individualized education plans (IEPs).

“It's a factor in the school to prison pipeline,” Ruth said. “There's research that shows when a child is arrested and processed in the criminal justice system, that they have a lower chance of graduating from high school and a greater chance of reoffending and going on to greater criminal activities.”

The present-day racial disparities of the school disruption charge echoes its history. At least 22 states — and many other towns and cities — have similar laws. And, like Maryland’s, most of them popped up in the 1960s, during the height of racial justice protests and school desegregation.

“There is racial bias baked into how this law is applied,” said Levi Bradford, an education attorney with the Public Justice Center. “That, to me, is reason enough to strike it down. If you can't use it without racial bias, then you don't need this law.”

Bradford calls school disruption a “kitchen sink charge,” because it is almost always tacked on to other criminal charges like theft and assault.

“It's become part of the prosecutor thing, to tack on as many charges as you possibly can to try and pressure kids into taking whatever deal they have on the table,” Bradford said. “It's prosecution ammo to push kids into harsher deals, to make it easier to convict someone. And that's really the only use case for this offense, because they almost never get filed.”

According to data Bradford obtained from the Department of Juvenile Services, 858 Maryland students were charged with school disruption last year. Only 86 of those were standalone charges — and none of those cases were formally filed in court.

Erin Seagears is a juvenile public defender with the Maryland Office of the Public Defender in Anne Arundel County. She says she’s never had a case where the standalone charge was school disruption in her three years in the position.

Seagears also said that more than a quarter of the school disruption charges issues last year happened in her county.

“This charge is only being used against kids in certain counties,” she said. “We want all kids to be able to feel safe and supported and to be able to thrive in school. And currently, with this charge, I see a lot of kids that don't always feel that way.”

According to Bradford’s data, the charge was only used eight times in Baltimore City last year. It was used 74 times in Baltimore County. Of those cases, only three in the county were formally filed in court — and all but five were against students of color.

The ‘teacher safety’ pushback

Conservative opponents to Delegate Ruth’s bill argue that teachers and school leaders need the school disruption charge to feel safe in their classrooms.

“I know many teachers who are leaving the profession because of disruptive behavior, and some of those that you might consider normal childhood behaviors,” said Delegate April Miller in the bill’s Feb. 14 hearing.

Miller also raised concerns about the charge’s use on college campuses, when student behavior can be threatening or dangerous but might not rise to the level of another criminal offense.

“One of the things I'm most proud of of girls in this generation is they treat, especially sexual crimes and sexual harassment situations, much differently than girls did at my age,” Miller said. “I would hate for something to enable that to happen more often.”

Bradford says this narrative is “scare tactics” to make teachers and school leaders feel like arrest is the only option.

“The narrative now is like, ‘If you can't arrest kids, how do you control their behavior,’ which I think is the most simplistic, horrible way to look at dealing with children,” he said. “We're currently seeing the reemergence of this kind of super predator narrative about kids being dangerous, when it's really just adults refusing to take responsibility for raising their kids.”

Ruth says getting rid of the school disruption charge won’t prevent teachers or school leaders from holding students accountable for violent behavior.

“If this bill were to pass, a student who commits assault could still be charged with assault, a student who brings a gun to school could still be charged with a gun crime,” Ruth said. “The only thing they couldn't be charged with are the specific things in this very vague, antiquated law.”

In February 2023, the U.S. Fourth District Court of Appeals upheld a 2021 decision that found a similar school disruption criminal law in South Carolina unconstitutional for being “arbitrary and discriminatory.”

Bradford said if all else fails, Maryland advocates can challenge current law through the court system, too.

“Because part of the main problem is that school disruption is really vague, it's highly interpretable. And because of that it gets interpreted against black kids way more often,” he said. “We have precedent now to just take this to court.”

But for now, advocates are seeking a legislative solution through the General Assembly. Maryland’s House of Delegates passed Ruth’s bill to nix the school disruption charge on March 1, and is now being debated by the senate.