In Wyoming, a 16-year-old girl says she was arrested at school on Thursday when she refused to wear a mask on campus.
Grace Smith is a junior at Laramie High School and told her story with state senator Anthony Bouchard in an online interview.
Smith said that the police placed her in handcuffs for trespassing after being suspended for not following the school's mask mandate and not leaving the campus.
Smith recorded a video of herself getting handcuffed, and the video was then shared online by her father, Andy Smith. The arrest led to a school lockdown so that it would "prevent further interruptions to academic learning," the school said in a statement obtained by the Laramie Boomerang.
The interaction between the officers and Smith was as cordial as it could be. As the officers asked Smith if she was still refusing to leave after receiving her citation, she replied, "yes, sir." The officers then placed her under arrest.
"When asked if they're arresting her for [not wearing] her mask, they'll say, 'No, we're arresting her for her violation of failure to comply in accordance with their trespassing ordinance,'" Andy Smith told Bouchard in their interview.
Smith added that she had received three separate two-day suspensions because she refuses to wear a mask. The young girl has also received $1,000 in trespassing fines for not leaving school grounds. However, her argument is that despite the campuses' mask mandate she had every right to receive her education.
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Self-described as a "straight-A-student," Smith said she has "never broken the law."
"I would never choose to do anything wrong, and I never saw myself sitting in the back of a cop car, handcuffed," Smith said.
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The school's mask order is set to expire Oct. 15, and in the interim Smith said she has been "cursed out" and that some of her best friends "won't talk to me."
Now she said that some parents and teachers are discriminating against her. She told Bouchard that she has been made to feel "unwanted by the school system" and is "stressed out" for fighting the mandate.
"Right now, I should be playing sports and having fun," she said. "And instead, I'm fighting for the rights that were supposed to be won hundreds of years ago."
