US Supreme Court Decides Student Speech Case
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that public school officials may restrict student speech at a school event when the speech is reasonably viewed as promoting illegal drug use. The case arose when students at Juneau-Douglas High School in Juneau, Alaska, were released to watch the Olympic torch pass by the school at a event that was school-sanctioned and supervised, but not required. Student Joe Frederick and some other individuals held up a banner across the street from the school that read "Bong Hits 4 Jesus."
Principal Deborah Morse directed them to take down the banner, which she confiscated, and then suspended Frederick. He sued, claiming his First Amendment rights had been violated. A U.S. district court held that Ms. Morse "had the authority, if not the obligation, to stop such messages at a school-sanctioned activity." The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed, holding that the school failed to show a risk of substantial disruption within the meaning of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Tinker v. Des Moines Indep. Cnty. Sch. Dist. The Supreme Court reversed the Ninth Circuit. Chief Justice Roberts authored the Court’s opinion, which was joined by Justices Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, and Alito.
The Court found that Ms. Morse’s interpretation of the banner as conveying a pro-drug message was "plainly a reasonable one."
The Court distilled two basic principles from its previous rulings on student speech: first, students’ free speech rights are construed "in light of the special characteristics of the school environment," and second, "the mode of analysis set forth in Tinker (the 1969 Supreme Court decision allowing students to express opposition to the Vietnam War by wearing black armbands to school) is not absolute" or "the only basis for restricting student speech."
In addition, the Court has applied a more relaxed standard to searches conducted in a school environment and "recognize[d] that deterring drug use by schoolchildren is an ‘important"indeed, perhaps compelling’ interest." Against this backdrop, the governmental interest in stopping student drug abuse allows schools to restrict student expression they reasonably regard as promoting illegal drug use.
However, the Court rejected the school district’s call for a broader rule that the speech was "proscribable because it is plainly ‘offensive’." The Court noted that the "concern here is not that [the student’s] speech was offensive, but that it was reasonably viewed as promoting illegal drug use."
Two Justices agreed with the opinion only in so far as "(a) it goes no further than to hold that a public school may restrict speech that a reasonable observer would interpret as advocating illegal drug use and (b) it provides no support for any restriction of speech that can plausibly be interpreted as commenting on any political or social issue, including speech on issues such as ‘the wisdom of the war on drugs or of legalizing marijuana for medicinal use."
In another concurring opinion, Justice Thomas wrote separately "to state my view that the standard set forth in Tinker, is without basis in the Constitution." He argued that in creating another "ad hoc" exception, "we continue to distance ourselves from Tinker, but we neither overrule it nor offer an explanation of when it operates and when it does not. "I am afraid that our jurisprudence now says that students have a right to speak in schools except when they don’t; a standard continually developed through litigation against local schools and their administrators." He expressed concern about "judicial oversight of the day-to-day affairs of public schools" and their "judgment calls" about interference with discipline and appropriate discipline, concluding that "local school boards, not the courts, should determine what pedagogical interests are ‘legitimate’ and what rules ‘reasonably relate to those interests."
Three dissenting Justices argued that the school’s interest could not "justify disciplining Frederick for his attempt to make an ambiguous statement to a television audience simply because it contained an oblique reference to drugs." Rather, the "First Amendment protects student speech if the message itself neither violates a permissible rule nor expressly advocates conduct that is illegal and harmful to students."
ditor’s Note: Earlier in this judicial term, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review the decision of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Guiles v. Marineau, the case involving a t-shirt worn by a student at the Williamstown (Vermont) Middle School. By refusing to take the Guiles case, the Supreme Court let stand the decision of the Appeals Court that school officials were justified in requiring a student to remove a t-shirt with uncomplimentary references to President Bush, including portrayals of cocaine and alcohol. The Second Circuit Court upheld disciplinary action against the student in part because, in the Court’s opinion, the t-shirt in question delivered an anti-drug message and was primarily political in nature, requiring that school officials show a threat of "substantial disruption" of the educational process before prohibiting primarily political expressions by students. This distinguishes the Guiles opinion from that of the Supreme Court in the Juneau, Alaska case, where the message of the banner was found to be a pro-drug message.
