March 18, 2024
Annapolis, US 39 F

Anne Arundel Bar County Bar Foundation announces winners of High School Essay Contest

The Anne Arundel Bar County Bar Foundation is pleased to announce the winners of its annual High School Essay Contest:

  • 1st Place ($500): Annabel Mungan, Rockbridge Academy
  • 2nd Place ($250): Teddy Frederick, South River High School
  • 3rd Place ($100): Luke Sheldon, Rockbridge Academy
aa county bar scholarships
From left: Contest founder and sponsor, Honorable Timothy Meredith of the Court of Special Appeals; Teddy Frederick, Annabel Mungan, Luke Sheldon, and Hon. Glenn Klavans of the Circuit Court for Anne Arundel County.

The contest was open to all public, private and home-schooled high school students, grades 9-12. Annabel Mungan, a 2017 graduate of Rockbridge Academy in Millersville, earned the first place award, topping her second place finish in last year’s competition. Mungan will be attending Johns Hopkins University next fall and plans to study environmental engineering.

The three winners received their awards on June 23 during a special ceremony in the Historic Courtroom of the Circuit Court in Annapolis. The Honorable Timothy Meredith of the Court of Special Appeals presented the awards. Judge Meredith and his wife, attorney Kathleen Meredith, founded the contest and have sponsored it for the past 18 years. During that time, about 2,850 county students have participated in the competition.

In addition to Judge Meredith, several long-standing members of the Anne Arundel Bar Association served as contest judges: Chris Brown, Brown & Getka, PA; Hon. Glenn Klavans, judge, Anne Arundel Circuit Court; Bill Roessler, retired deputy state’s attorney for Anne Arundel County; and Tim Sheridan, court administrator for the Baltimore County Circuit Court.

For this year’s essay contest, high school students were invited to express their opinions on the U.S. Supreme Court case Packingham v. North Carolina. The students had to consider this question: Can a State may make it a crime for a registered sex offender to access any social networking site or website that might be frequented by minors.” The State of North Carolina has a law that prohibits registered sex offenders from accessing social media sites or other websites that enable communication and exchange of information among users, if those sites allow minors to have accounts. The plaintiff in the case argued that the North Carolina law is a violation of the First Amendment. The State argued that the law is narrowly tailored and did not actually regulate speech by registered sex offenders.

At the time of the contest, the U.S. Supreme Court had not yet ruled on the case. All three essay contest winners agreed with the plaintiff’s contention that the North Carolina law placed unconstitutional restrictions on free speech. The Supreme Court ultimately agreed with the views of the essay contest winners, ruling 8-0 in favor of the plaintiff in a decision that was issued on June 19, 2017.

 

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