Source: https://www.freedomforuminstitute.org/2019/01/30/tinker-after-50-a-historic-ruling-still-relevant-after-all-these-years/
Timestamp: 2019-04-22 00:40:40+00:00

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Posted on January 30, 2019 by David L. Hudson Jr.
Amazingly, the Court’s decision in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (1969) remains the leading K-12 First Amendment decision – the baseline for which the vast majority of public student free-expression cases are examined. In the intervening 50 years, the Supreme Court on occasion has created exceptions or carve-outs to the Tinker decision but has reaffirmed its validity. Most courts even apply the Tinker decision to cases involving off-campus social media posts that has some connection to on-school activity. In other words, Tinker remains the case for student First Amendment rights.
Before Tinker, the Supreme Court had not articulated a clear test or set of rules to determine when students had the ability to engage in freedom of expression. Back during the era of World War II, the Supreme Court famously overruled a decision only a few years earlier and determined that a pair of Jehovah Witness sisters attending public school students had the right to refuse to salute the flag and recite the Pledge of Allegiance. The Court’s decision in West Virginia Bd. of Educ. v. Barnette established that students had some level of free-speech rights but it certainly did not establish any sort of clear test.
In Barnette, the Court emphasized the importance of protecting students’ constitutional rights, writing in majestic language: “That they are educating the young for citizenship is reason for scrupulous protection of Constitutional freedoms of the individual, if we are not to strangle the free mind at its source and teach youth to discount important principles of government as mere platitudes.” The Court also created an important new principle in First Amendment law – the so-called compelled speech doctrine. Under this doctrine, the government can violate the First Amendment by compelling people to engage in certain speech.
While Barnette was a historic victory for Jehovah Witnesses and students, the decision did not create a discernible test for determining when student speech was protected. Furthermore, many viewed the Barnette decision as more of a freedom of religion case than a free-speech case.
The Tinker case arose out of an era of social activism, a commitment to principle, and civil rights. Leonard Tinker – the father of Mary Beth and John Tinker – was a Methodist minister who had been removed from his church for integrating church services. He also had gone to Washington D.C. for an anti-war rally. The parents of Christopher Eckhardt – a black armband wearing student – similarly were committed to social justice and anti-war principles. In December 1965, the Eckhardt home served as a meeting place for those committed to standing up and speaking out against the Vietnam War. Someone suggested that the students enter the cause by wearing black peace armbands.
Somehow school officials in Des Moines learned of the impending student protest and quickly passed a no black armband rule – even though students routinely wore political campaign buttons, Iron Crosses, and other forms of symbolic speech. In other words, school officials censored one symbolic associated with a particular political viewpoint.
Middle-schooler Mary Beth Tinker and several high school students, including John Tinker and Christopher Eckhardt – wore their armbands and suffered suspensions. They sued in federal district court and lost. The federal district court judge – a former military officer – believed that the school policy banning armbands was reasonable. The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals divided evenly without an opinion, leaving the lower court ruling in place.
That meant that the only place for the students to prevail was the United States Supreme Court. But, they did by a 7-2 vote. “It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate,” wrote Justice Abe Fortas.
He emphasized that the students had engaged in “silent, passive” political speech and had engaged in no disruptive activity. Furthermore, the armbands did not cause a substantial disruption or material interference with school activities or impinge on the rights of other students. This sowed the seeds for what has become known as the principal test emanating from the Tinker decision – the “substantial disruption” test.
The decision “certainly increased the social consciousness of many students about the importance of First Amendment freedoms and the fact that the highest court in the country had affirmed that they possessed them.” The decision launched an era in which students challenged various forms of restrictions ranging from dress codes, regulation of hairstyles, censorship of student written work, walkouts, and other issues.
In our system, state-operated schools may not be enclaves of totalitarianism. School officials do not possess absolute authority over their students.
In our system, students may not be regarded as closed-circuit recipients of only that which the State chooses to communicate.
Any word spoken, in class, in the lunchroom, or on the campus, that deviates from the views of another person may start an argument or cause a disturbance. But our Constitution says we must take that risk.
But, the Supreme Court that decided the Tinker decision was a relatively liberal Court. It was the Warren Court led by Chief Justice Earl Warren, a Court that desegregated public schools, revolutionized criminal procedure, and expanded the right to vote. The Court in the 1970s and 1980s was a different Court shaped largely by President Richard Nixon appointing more conservative jurists to the Court. Furthermore, some in society viewed some of the 1960s social activism as excess and longed for a return to more stability.
The Court in Fraser distinguished the political speech of the Tinker armbands with the vulgar and lewd words chosen by Matthew Fraser. The result was a new rule – public school officials can prohibit student speech that is vulgar, lewd, or plainly offensive.
Two years later, the Court created another rule for so-called school-sponsored speech or speech bearing the imprimatur of the school in Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier. The case involving a high school newspaper produced as part of a journalism class at Hazelwood East High School in St. Louis County, Missouri. The school’s principal, Robert Eugene Reynolds, believed that two articles in the upcoming issue of The Spectrum were inappropriate for the school newspaper. These articles discussed teen pregnancy and divorce. Reynolds ordered the articles excised from the school newspaper, a decision that three female student editors – Cathy Kuhlmeier, Leslie Smart, and Leanne Tippett-West – objected to strenuously. They filed suit in federal court, contending that Reynolds’ act of censorship violated their First Amendment free-speech rights. They argued that there was no showing that the articles in question would be substantially disruptive under Tinker. The articles also were not lewd or vulgar within the meaning of Fraser.
Under Hazelwood, school-sponsored speech includes curricular expression, many student newspapers, school plays, school athletic expression, and much more. Thus, a key question in student-speech cases is whether the student expression in question is student-initiated or school-sponsored. If student-initiated, Tinker governs. If school-sponsored, Hazelwood governs.
Frederick argued that Principal Morse violated his First Amendment free-speech rights, because he had engaged in off-campus speech that was not disruptive to the school. He had a point. After all, he was not on school grounds but a public street when he unveiled the banner. However, the Supreme Court reasoned that the Olympic Torch Relay was a “school-sanctioned” event and that Principal Morse had the power to discipline Frederick for the drug-related speech.
In each of these three decisions post-Tinker – Fraser, Hazelwood, and Morse – the Supreme Court ruled against public school students and in favor of school officials. However, the Tinker case still stands as the baseline rule for student-initiated speech that is not vulgar or lewd or promotes the illegal use of drugs.
The chief test from Tinker is the substantial disruption test. School officials must show that they could reasonably forecast that the student expression would cause a substantial disruption or material interference with school activities. Justice Fortas devised a test that was designed to be quite protective of student rights. Through the years, however, some lower courts have turned the speech-protective test into one that is quite deferential to school officials.
For example, a federal appeals court ruled that public school officials in California could prohibit several students from wearing t-shirts with pictures of the American flag on them on Cinqo de Mayo, because it might lead to tension with other students. In other words, students who peacefully wore t-shirts with American flags could be prohibited from their peaceful expression because some other students might behave poorly.
Another federal appeals court ruled that public school officials in Mississippi could expel a student for creating a rap video off-campus that blew the whistle on the sexually harassing actions of two physical education teachers. The appeals court majority reasoned that the rap music video had intemperate language that created a commotion at the school sufficient to cause a substantial disruption. One of the dissenting judges warned that the majority opinion “allows schools to police their students’ Internet expression anytime and anywhere-an unprecedented and unnecessary intrusion on students’ rights.” He also pointed out the irony that school officials silenced the student’s critical speech of school officials when the very point of the First Amendment was to allow speech critical of the government.
The Tinker decision was a watershed moment in American history. “Virtually every observer — legal and layperson alike — views Tinker as the high-water mark for student First Amendment rights.” The decision recognized the importance of students learning the value and importance of constitutional rights and living in an environment that respected them. Hopefully, more school officials will respect the teachings and legacy of that historic decision.
 West Virginia Bd. of Educ. v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943).
 Barnette, 319 U.S. at 637.
 Tinker, 393 U.S. at 508.
 Tinker, 393 U.S. at 509.
 Tinker, 393 U.S. at 514.
 David L. Hudson, Jr. Let The Students Speak!: A History of the Fight for Freedom of Expression in American Schools (Beacon Press, 2011) at p. 69.
 Tinker, 393 U.S. at 511.
 Fraser, 478 U.S. at 681.
 Hazelwood, 484 U.S. at 273.
 Hazelwood, 484 U.S. at 272.
 Hazelwood, 484 U.S. at 289 (J. Brennan, dissenting).
 Morse v. Frederick, 551 U.S. 393 (2007).
 Morse, 551 U.S. at .
 David L. Hudson, Jr. Losing the Spirit of Tinker v. Des Moines and the Urgent Need to Protect Student Speech, 66 Clev. St. L. Rev. Et. Cet. 1, 5-6 (2018).
 Dariano v. Morgan Hill Unified Sch. Dist., 767 F.3d 764 (9th Cir. 2014).
 Bell v. Itawamba Sch. Bd., 799 F.3d 379 (5th Cir. 2015).
 Bell, 799 F.3d at 405 (J. Dennis, dissenting).
 Bell, 799 F.3d at 412 (J. Dennis, dissenting).
 David L. Hudson, Jr. K-12 Expression and the First Amendment, FIRE, April 14, 2017.
 David L. Hudson, Jr. “On 30-Year Anniversary, Tinker Participants Look Back at Landmark Case,” Freedom Forum Institute, 2/24/1999.
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