Hornstine v. Township of Moorestown

Blair Hornstine was an 18-year-old high school student from Moorestown, New Jersey, who achieved national fame by suing her high school to name her their sole valedictorian for 2003. Humiliation followed.

On paper, Blair looks like a great kid. In 1995, when she was 7 and her brother Adam was 14, they founded an organization called the Moorestown Alliance for Goodwill and Interest in the Community, or "MAGIC". As she later summarized it, "MAGIC's goals include community service to provide social support and hope to the elderly, disabled and underprivileged." Her brother was subsequently accepted to Harvard University.

A few years after creating MAGIC, Blair was quoted in the press saying

Knowing that I've helped someone less fortunate is rewarding.

Other resume highlights include the following:

• In 2001 she was selected as one of New Jersey’s Olympic torch relay carriers.
• In 2002 she was one of the nine winners of the $25,000 national Discover Card Tribute Award scholarships, as well as one of twenty winners of the 2002 President's Community Volunteer Awards.
• She received 1570 on her SATs (for older readers, these are re-normalized scores and would have been a couple of hundred points lower prior to the early 1990s).
• She had a 4.0 GPA
• She raised money to correct orphans' cleft lips and palates and earned a trip to China as a result
• She held a prom dress drive for low-income high school girls
• She raised money for Sept. 11 victims
• She was moot court captain.
• She made the third team in the USA TODAY's 17th annual All-USA High School Academic Team competition.
• She cofounded an initiative that collected 30,000 pounds of food for the hungry.
• She had a regular column in the Courier-Post newspaper of Cherry Hill, New Jersey. This would prove her undoing.

In her senior year of high school, Blair was accepted to Harvard, Stanford, Duke, Princeton, and Cornell.

Through this all, Hornstine apparently suffered from an immune disorder that made it impossible for her to participate in school gym classes. This had three positive effects on her academic record – she freed time to work on other subjects, she got a personal academic tutor for free, and Moorestown High School, in its calculation of GPA, weighed gym lower than academic subjects. Therefore, by leaving it out, Blair became capable of a slightly higher GPA than was mathematically possible for other students.

Considering this, school superintendent Paul Kadri decided it would be most fair to name more than one valedictorian. As he explained afterwards,

After reviewing these issues, I was concerned about the fundamental fairness of the academic competition engaged in for the valedictorian and salutatorian awards. The level of competition ... had been compromised.

Blair Hornstine did not like this at all. Though she had already been accepted to Harvard University, and could not possibly have been hurt by others being named, she brought suit in federal court to force the school to name her as sole valedictorian. She also wanted $2.7 million for her embarrassment, pain, and suffering.

As Blair explained it, the suit was for the public good, “an act of necessity, aimed at saving others from apathy.” Her classmates were far from apathetic. Most of them viewed her disability as a transparent sham, and her lawsuit as a sign of selfishness and bad parenting. After all, they pointed out, Blair's "disability" had not prevented her from jogging with the Olympic torch, or from competing in other scholarship-friendly athletic endeavors. Superintendent Paul Kadri agreed, saying that Blair's father, a New Jersey state Supreme Court judge named Louis Hornstine, had told him that

he was going to manipulate rules designed to protect disabled students for the purpose of allowing [Blair] to win the valedictorian award.

To no avail. On May 8, 2003, U.S. District Judge Freda Woldson ordered the Moorestown school district to name Blair Hornstine the sole valedictorian for the class of 2003. Her claim for compensatory and punitive damages has not yet been resolved.

Thus Blair won the stage for herself alone. She also won the experience of being vilified as petty and selfish in newspapers and television shows across the country. She and her family have apparently received many hateful and threatening e-mails, letters, and phone calls.

Hilariously, shortly after Judge Woldson handed down her decision, it was revealed that Blair had engaged in rampant plagiarism in her column in the Cherry Hill Courier-Post. She wasn’t very subtle about it, and stole from sources like President Clinton and U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Brennan. She had entered some of these essays into contests and on one occasion had even won (for text stolen from Steve LaMontagne, senior analyst at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in Washington, D.C.). Thanks to the Associated Press for compiling these examples and their sources:

-From Hornstine's Nov. 26 column:

At Thanksgiving this year, Americans must carry on that tradition of sharing not only with family and friends but also with those in need throughout their communities. Every generation of Americans has benefited from the generosity, talents, efforts and contributions of their fellow citizens. All of us have been enriched by the diverse cultures, traditions and beliefs of the millions of people who, by birth or by choice, have come to call American their home.

All of us are beneficiaries of our founders' wisdom and of the service and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform. While Americans are an independent people, we are interdependent as well, and our greatest achievements are those that we have accomplished together. As we celebrate Thanksgiving, let us remember with gratitude that, despite our differences, each of us is a member of a larger American family and that, working together, there is nothing we cannot accomplish.

-From President Clinton's Thanksgiving proclamation, 2000:

At Thanksgiving this year and every year, in worship services and family celebrations across our country, Americans carry on that tradition of giving, sharing not only with family and friends, but also with those in need throughout their communities.

Every generation of Americans has benefited from the generosity, talents, efforts and contributions of their fellow citizens. All of us have been enriched by the diverse cultures, traditions and beliefs of the millions of people who, by birth or choice, have come to call America their home. All of us are beneficiaries of our founders' Wisdom and of the service and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform. While Americans are an independent people, we are interdependent as well, and our greatest achievements are those we have accomplished together.

As we celebrate Thanksgiving, let us remember with gratitude that despite our differences in background, age, politics or race, each of us is a member of our larger American family and that, working together, there is nothing we cannot accomplish in this promising new century.

---

-From Hornstine's Nov. 12 column on art censorship:

If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that public entities may not prohibit expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.

-From U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Brennan's 1989 decision in Texas v. Johnson:

If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that Government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.

---

-From Hornstine's March 29 essay on North Korea's nuclear arms. The essay won the newspaper's monthly contest:

North Korea's recent admission that it has continued to pursue a nuclear weapons program in violation of the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty, the 192 Joint Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, and the 1994 Agreed Framework caught the United States off guard and startled the world. Rather than rush to judgment, it is extremely important that the Bush administration endeavors to mount a coordinated peaceful international response.

...

While the hope is that North Korea will respond favorably, if the delicate political balance is untenable, then the United States must warn them of clear consequences should North Korea choose not to comply with international demands. Despite the preference for a diplomatic solution, we must be mindful that the use of military force may be a reluctant alternative.

-From a piece by Steve LaMontagne, senior analyst at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in Washington, D.C., posted on The Nautilus Institute's Web site:

North Korea's recent admission that it has continued to pursue a nuclear weapons program in violation of the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty, the 1992 Joint Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, and the 1994 Agreed Framework caught the United States off guard and startled the world. As the Bush administration endeavors to mount a coordinated international response, it is important to consider the status of North Korea's nuclear program, possible reasons for its disclosure, and the implications of various response options.

...

While the hope is that North Korea will respond to a delicate balance of carrots and sticks, if incentives prove unattractive to North Korea or politically untenable at home, then the U.S. will have to warn of clear consequences should North Korea choose not to comply with international demands. Despite the preference for a diplomatic solution, such an ultimatum could lead to a policy of isolation, and ultimately the use of military force.

On Wednesday, June 11, Blair had her lawyer, Edwin Jacobs, inform the school that she did not intend to attend graduation and that her valedictorian award should be made in absentia.

This letter will formally advise you that the hostile environment at the school has traumatized Blair both physically and emotionally, to the point that she cannot and will not attend the graduation ceremonies.

She will not be missed.

Blair accepted her spot at Harvard and planned to attend in the fall, though over two thousand students there signed a petition saying they didn't want her to come. In June, Harvard spokespeople refused to comment on the furor, though they admitted that "several" admissions for the year were under reconsideration. As per Harvard's standard procedure in these cases, Blair was given a chance to explain her dishonest behavior. She passed the buck, saying that her plagiarism resulted from a "lack of training in journalism." In July, Harvard pulled her acceptance.

Director of Undergraduate Admissions Marlyn McGrath Lewis declined to comment on Hornstine’s case specifically, but discussed the conditions under which admissions might generally be revoked, including “if [the candidate] engage[s] in behavior that brings into question [her] honesty, maturity, or moral character.”

When last I checked, Hornstine’s $2.7 million suit remained in litigation and the president of the Moorestown school board had announced that they planned to investigate the integrity of Hornstine’s academic coursework.

Blair plans to become a lawyer.

Sources

Newark Star-Ledger, 21 May 1999
Newark Star-Ledger, 21 December 2001
School Administrator, 1 September 2002
Associated Press, 2 May 2003
New York Post 3 May 2003
Associated Press, 9 May 2003
The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 25 May 2003
Associated Press 4 June 2003
Associated Press 11 June 2003
Harvard Crimson 11 July 2003