(Bloomberg) -- A New York appeals court revived a lawsuit against the elite Spence School for disciplining a student over an Instagram post.

Adam and Michelle Parker in 2019 sued the Upper East Side all-girls private school for slander and other claims after their then-15-year-old daughter was ordered to stay home for a half-day of “reflection.” The punishment was imposed after the girl posted a chat to Instagram in which she participated in jokes about dressing up for Halloween as enslaved people, indigenous people and Hitler.

The Parkers’ suit was dismissed in 2020, but a New York appeals court on Thursday reinstated a single claim for breach of contract. The panel of judges said there was a possibility that the school had not followed its own procedures in deciding the girl had committed an infraction meriting the punishment.

“We are pleased that the lawsuit will now be moving forward and look forward to discovery in the case,” the Parkers’ lawyers, Tom Clare and Elizabeth Locke, said in a statement.

Parental Disputes

Spence, which recently approved a tuition increase to over $60,000 a year for the 2022-2023 school year, said it was pleased that the court upheld the dismissal of most of the Parkers’ claims.

“Spence will continue to vigorously defend the single remaining contract issue in the case, as it properly followed its procedures in finding that a half-day of home reflection was an appropriate educational remedy here,” the school said in a statement.

The Parkers’ case attracted media attention as part of a host of disputes between elite Manhattan schools and parents, some of whom have decried the adoption of what they called “woke” antiracism policies and curricula. 

The Parkers claimed their daughter had been “falsely accused of acts of racism and anti-semitism and publicly accused of engaging in racist conduct.” They noted that the school held an assembly of all 10th grade students to discuss the Instagram post and separately forced her to apologize to a Black student.

‘Outrageous Conduct’

According to the Thursday ruling, the Parkers’ slander claim was properly dismissed because they couldn’t “sufficiently allege damages” since their daughter was a full-time student and not engaged in a “trade, business or profession” in which she could suffer economic harm.

Dismissal of the parents’ emotional-distress claims was upheld because the school’s action did not amount to “extreme and outrageous conduct,” the panel said.

The Parkers’ claim that the school failed to investigate harassment of their daughter over the incident was also rejected. The court said no such investigation was warranted under Spence policy that “applied only to harassment based on race, sex, religion, national origin, age, disability, sexual orientation or any other characteristic protected by law.”

The breach-of-contract claim revived by the appeals court focuses on the disciplinary process Spence followed after the incident. The Parkers say the school failed to convene a “community standards committee,” as called for in their enrollment contract, and inappropriately let a diversity administrator play a leading role in imposing punishment on their daughter.

(Updates with additional detail on revived claim in last paragraph.)

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