Good student speech article, Supreme Court implications
CQ Weekly: Courts & the Law: Figure of Speech
School administrators around the country are punishing students for speaking out on issues ranging from abortion and homosexuality to drug use and the war in Iraq. And the Supreme Court appears poised to side with school administrators and — for no compelling reason — limit a landmark 1960s precedent aimed at safeguarding pupils’ free-speech rights.
In oral arguments in March, the Juneau school board will ask the justices to uphold an Alaska high school student’s 10-day suspension for unfurling a pro-drug-use banner to display as the Olympic torch relay passed by the school in 2002. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the suspension violated Joseph Frederick’s First Amendment rights. But the school board, backed by the National School Boards Association, maintains that upholding the ruling would hinder schools’ anti-drug programs and subject school administrators to damage suits in a murky area of law.
Similar cases dot dockets around the country. In Williamstown, Vt., a student went to court after he was disciplined for wearing a T-shirt identifying President Bush as “Chicken-Hawk-in-Chief†and adorned with drug and alcohol imagery. A student in Poway, Calif., challenged his suspension for wearing a T-shirt inscribed with the words “Homosexuality Is Shameful.†The Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian religious liberty advocacy group, is backing the California student’s cause and also has filed federal lawsuits on behalf of students in New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia who were barred from wearing anti-abortion T-shirts or distributing anti-abortion literature.
Let’s hope that the SCOTUS is not “poised” to further limit freedom as the author suggests because of some vague and subjective standards. For an example of judicial chicanery of this sort, I would read about the outrageous 9th Circuit opinion in the above-mentioned Harper case.
In Juneau, Frederick’s stunt — displaying for TV cameras a banner that read “Bong Hits 4 Jesus†— can easily be dismissed as sophomoric. He muddied the case by saying the phrase was meaningless nonsense, not a pro-drug message. Still, school officials are making a far-reaching argument, that the banner was “offensive†and interfered with the school’s “mission†of deterring illegal drug use. Under that reasoning, the Des Moines school board might have won the Tinker case by claiming support for U.S. troops in Vietnam as part of its “mission.â€
In fact, the public schools’ most important mission is to prepare students for democratic governance in a country with what the Supreme Court has called “a profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open.†That lesson is never too early for students to learn — or for teachers and principals to teach.
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Posted by Greg Scott on January 23, 2007 10:37 am
» Filed Under 1st Amendment, ACLU, Abortion, Activist Judges, Church And State, News
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One Response to “Good student speech article, Supreme Court implications”
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Syndicate Me
Whats truly sad is how much this truly distracts from the primary duty of schools and thats to teach. No wonder we have kids who come out not knowing the difference between a 1/2′ cleat and 5/8′cleat. Dress codes, as much as I despised them, when I went to school weren’t all that bad and didn’t distract me from the subjects the teachers tried to pound into my head.That included the so called corporal punishment.