This may or may not be of interest: I was bored with nothing important to do the evening I found the Smoking Gun's page, on this...and do I transcribed the entire thing so that it wasn't locked up in non-searchable images.

Thanks for the heads-up - this is cool on so many levels. I used to teach high school and I would have used this in class. Which is why I say "used to teach high school," my lesson plans were so often questioned ;)

I'm not a lawyer, but I think the reason the legal paperwork avoided the question of the word "fag" was just expediency and strategy. I would guess that sticking to a clear examination of issues of legal precedence and linguistic history concerning "fuck" make the point, and discussion of the term "fag" could be handled in court, if the proceedings go that way and the judge decided it needs to. I could definitely be wrong or naive, but don't think lawyers always cover all bases in written briefs, too much info opens you up to attack?

I also think its cool this isn't a rich kid/daddy gots a lawyer scenario, but that shouldn't matter so much. We all benefit when legal minds work for us, not against us, and I know well-off ACLU lawyers who take cases - pro bono, besides taking cases handsomely paid by whatever fundage - to help kids, good people, etc. from getting screwed. Scenarios similar enough to this. I also know public defenders and legal aid attorneys who work the same, I salute all of them. I wish my legal aid friends got paid more, of course...

While the conclusion Kickstart70 jumped to is certainly understandable in modern day America, if you reread the beginning of the article, you will find that this brief was prepared by a public defender for his client's criminal charges.
Whereas the kid's parents may or may not be crappy, I do not think we can conclude that they are rich.

This mentions the book The F Word, but fails to note that
the author is the OED's current North American Editor.

I particularly like the bit, "However, yelling 'Fuck!' in a
crowded theatre does not create a clear and present danger to
anyone and thus cannot be outlawed. Althouth they are both
four letter words that start with F, the distinction is
constitutionally significant."

All I'm certain of is that the kids parents are crappy and rich enough to force through this ridiculous lawsuit.

Did I miss something or did the brief only look at the word "fuck" and said nothing about "fag"?

Oh...it looks like I neglected to actually read the words...interpreting 'principal' as 'president.'

Oh well. His vice principal probably (but not certainly) was not a fag either, but being a vice principal, the odds are good that he was an asshole.

Cheney is not a 'fucking fag.'

Come on, this is California, even San Francisco. We are not so intolerant. And besides, Cheney isn't a 'fag.' No, the phrase the kid was looking for was 'Dick Cheney is a fucking asshole.'

An interesting bit here is the use of the "fuck" page on Wikipedia as a source:

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuck

The page is cited specifically in the text of the motion and appears to have been used as a bit of a jumping off point in the motion's argument that the word is firmly ensconced in popular culture, using several of the same examples as the Wikipedia page.

Nice example of "open content" (Wikipedia content is covered by the GNU Free Documentation License) in action in the real world.