Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/20-255_g3bi.pdf
Page Number: 36

Cite as:  594 U. S. ____ (2021) 

3 

THOMAS, J., dissenting 

direct and immediate tendency to injure the school, to sub-
vert the master’s authority, and  to beget disorder and in-
subordination.”  Id., at 120; see also ibid. (“direct and im-
mediate tendency to . . . bring the master’s authority into 
contempt”).   The  court  distinguished  the  speech  at  issue
from  speech  “in  no  ways  connected  with  or  affecting  the 
school” and speech that has “merely a remote and indirect 
tendency to injure.”  Id., at 120–121.  In requiring a “direct
and  immediate  tendency”  to  harm,  id.,  at  120,  the  court 
used the language of proximate causation, see Black’s Law 
Dictionary 274 (11th ed. 2019) (defining “proximate cause” 
as a “cause that directly produces an event”); id., at 1481 
(defining  “proximate”  as  “[i]mmediately  before  or  after”); 
see also Atchison, T. & S. F. R. Co. v. Calhoun, 213 U. S. 1, 
7  (1909)  (using  “proximate”  cause  and  “immediate”  cause
interchangeably). 

This  rule  was  widespread.  It  was  consistent  with  “the 
universal custom” in New England.  Lander, 32 Vt., at 121. 
Various cases, treatises, and school manuals endorsed it.* 
And a justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court, presiding 
over a trial, declared the rule “well settled.”  T. Stockwell, 
The School Manual, Containing the School Laws of Rhode 
Island 236–238 (1882) (Stockwell). 

So widespread was this rule that it served not only as the
basis for schools to discipline disrespectful speech but also 
to  regulate  truancy.  Although  modern  doctrine  draws  a 
clear  line  between  speech  and  conduct,  cases  in  the  19th
century  did  not.  E.g.,  Lander,  32  Vt.,  at  120  (describing 

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*E.g., Deskins v. Gose, 85 Mo. 485, 488–489 (1885) (citing Lander); F.
Burke, Law of Public Schools 116, 129 (1880) (“[W]hatsoever has a direct
and immediate tendency to injure the school in its important interests, 
or to subvert the authority of those in charge of it, is properly a subject 
for  regulation  and  discipline,  and  this  is  so  wherever  the  acts  may  be 
committed” (citing Lander)); C. Bardeen, The New York School Office’s 
Handbook 158 (1910) (citing Lander).