How to stop a movieclip from being affected by a mouse event

if you had a parent movieclip, say mc1, and two movieclips inside that, say mc2 and mc3, and you had a color button that changed the color of mc3, how would you stop the button from affecting mc2? to make it clearer, mc3 is a fence section and mc2 is the shadow affect (for realistic looking fence section). when the button is pressed on the stage, the color take both movieclips and turns them into its functions color.