Colorado Kid Pulled from Class for Wearing ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ Patch

A twelve-year-old boy in Colorado Springs, Colo., was removed from his class on Monday for reportedly wearing a Gadsden flag patch on his backpack. The famous yellow insignia features a coiled snake with the words “Don’t Tread on Me” emblazoned beneath the imagery.

In a video seemingly captured by the student’s parent, an administrator insists that the child cannot return to his studies at the Vanguard School unless the patch is removed. “The reason that they do not want the flag — the reason we do not want the flag, basically — is due to its origins with slavery and the slave trade,” a female representative of the school is seen saying in a video that went viral on X, the social-media platform formerly known as Twitter.

“I was upset that he’s missing so much school, so I asked if he could just take his stuff out of his bag and go back to class. I just want him to go back to class. The bag can’t go back; it’s got the patch on it. Because we can’t have that in and around other kids.”

“Yeah, it has nothing to do with slavery. That’s the Revolutionary War patch,” the boy’s guardian responds. “Maybe you’re thinking about the Confederate flag?”

“I am here to enforce the policy that was provided by the district, and definitely, you have every right not to agree with it,” the teacher responds before the boy’s mother insists that the Gadsden flag is permitted unless there is a blanket ban on all patches. The educator then offered to connect the guardian with Jeff Yocum, the director of operations at the school.

Correspondence regarding the discussion with Yocum further revealed that the school official based the policy on articles from a design professor from Iowa State University and a news outlet called the Conversation.

Yocum also cited a U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) ruling involving a Postal worker, which found that while the flag “originated in the Revolutionary War in a non-racial context,” despite its “historic origins and meaning of the symbol, it also has since been sometimes interpreted to convey racially-tinged messages.”

Colorado’s governor Jared Polis weighed in on the controversy by defending the Gadsden flag’s use and history.