Shortly after their son received a “D” grade for using AI on a history paper at Hingham High School, his parents filed suit — claiming that “artificial intelligence is here to stay.”

“While artificial intelligence is a new technology and it is still emerging, it is widely accepted. Business, other industries, academia and even the legal profession are still grappling with how to address its use,” states a complaint filed last month in Plymouth County Superior Court and refiled recently in federal court in Boston.

The lawsuit is a novel one, as Duxbury attorney Peter Farrell writes in the complaint that he believes “this is a case of first impression in the Commonwealth” — meaning that it “presents a legal issue that has never been decided by the governing jurisdiction,” according to Cornell University’s Wex law dictionary.

Hingham residents Dale and Jennifer Harris do not contest that their son did not use AI to work on his paper regarding basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s civil rights work. Instead, they argue that he wasn’t expressly barred from using the technology so it shouldn’t count against him.

They also complain that it cost him a deferral from the National Honor Society, which could negatively impact his collegiate dreams.

The defendants, including former Hingham Public Schools Superintendent Margaret Adams — who has since taken a job at Everett Public Schools — the boy’s teacher, and members of the School Committee, countered in a motion to dismiss that the student “was given a relatively lenient and measured discipline for a serious infraction, using Artificial Intelligence on a project, amounting to something well less than a suspension.”

“This lawsuit is not about the expulsion, or even the suspension, of a high school student,” the motion filed in federal court states. “Instead, the dispute concerns a student … dissatisfied with a letter grade in AP US History class, having to attend a ‘Saturday’ detention, and his deferral from NHS — rudimentary student discipline administered for an academic integrity violation.”

“The defendants must stand by the just and legitimate discipline rendered,” the motion states. “Otherwise, they invite dissatisfied parents and students to challenge day-to-day discipline, even grading of students, in state and federal courts.”

The son is a rising senior who, the complaint states, “excelled academically, athletically and is well known for his commitment to community and character; so much so that he is in the process of applying early action or early decision to elite colleges and universities commensurate with his academic record,” with Stanford University named specifically.

The boy, a three-sport varsity student-athlete, is named in the Superior Court complaint but will be unnamed here because he’s a minor.

According to the complaint, the matter stems from the student’s assignment, with a partner, for a project in “the long-running historical contest known colloquially as ‘National History Day’” in Susan Petrie’s AP U.S. History class in the second quarter of the previous school year.

The Harris boy and his partner were able to get only into the preliminary stages of the project when Petrie’s “spot check” of their work revealed the presence of AI-generated content. The teacher accused them of cheating, according to the complaint.

Petrie and Andrew Hoey, the head of the school’s history department, told the students they would have to each start new projects separately, could not use any of their previous work, and could not use AI at all.

The student at the heart of the complaint received a 0/20 for the notes portion of his project, a 0/30 on the rough draft portion and a 65/100 on the final paper — a D, “despite the fact he was forced to restart the project from scratch and never having received a grade this low on a final written project.”

The complaint argues that the use of AI was not explicitly barred by the teacher or the school’s Academic Integrity policy in effect at the time in question.

The complaint was filed on Sept. 16. The defendants filed a response about a week later asking for the matter to be transferred to federal court, as the underlying legal argument asserts a claim based on federal law.

A hearing is scheduled for Oct. 22 at 9 a.m.