Photo Credit: Raymond Flotat
Killer Mike, Big Boi, and T.I. are a few of the artists that have gotten on board to help defend a high school student’s freedom of speech rights in his rap.

About four years ago a high school senior named Taylor Bell was suspended for the lyrics he had in a rap song he was recording. The lyrics accused two coaches of his school of sexual misconduct, as the New York Times reports (via Pitchfork). One of the lines of the song was, “Looking down girls’ shirts, drool running down your mouth / Going to get a pistol down your mouth.”

Seeing this as an attack on a person’s freedom of speech and Rap music as an art form, Killer Mike, Big Boi and T.I. are among the many artists that have signed an amicus brief to the Supreme Court in order for Bell to sue for his suspension and have it removed from his record. “The government punished a young man for his art — and, more disturbing, for the musical genre by which he chose to express himself,” the brief reads. Killer Mike had this to say in his addition to the brief, “anyone who is learned in law is capable of supporting art and lyrics, whether you agree with them or not, and actual human behavior.” He used Johnny Cash’s Folsom Prison Blues and Bob Marley’s “I Shot The Sheriff” to help support his claim.

Pharoahe Monch, Boots Riley, Jasiri X, Favianna Rodriguez, Toni Blackman, and several rap scholars have also signed the brief. Erik Nielson, a professor at the University of Richmond who signed the brief, has shared the text in full at his blog. Read it here.

The pretext for Bell’s suspension was that he used violent lyrics in order to threaten two named educators with gun-related violence. The First Amendment challenge was rejected by the U.S. Court of Appeals back in August. The New Orleans panel cited Bell’s lyrics to be “incredibly profane and vulgar.” A final decision will be made in Februrary by The Supreme Court on whether or not to hear the case, the Times reports.