Source: https://www.pulj.org/the-roundtable/flags-and-free-speech-constitutional-rights-in-classrooms
Timestamp: 2019-04-22 20:02:47+00:00

Document:
It’s no surprise, then, that school officials in 2010 were concerned about similar altercations. Assistant Principal Miguel Rodriguez, directed by Principal Nick Boden, asked the students to turn their shirts inside out or take them off. The students refused, even acknowledging the safety risks they were assuming. Two students returned to class after Rodriguez deemed their shirts less provocative, but the remaining two students – refusing to remove their shirts – were asked to return home with no academic consequences. The students did so, but all, including the teens who returned to class, were threatened with violence later that day.
Freedom of speech in schools has long been debated. The court referenced the “well-recognized framework” of Tinker v. Des Moines (1969), which upheld a student’s right to free speech in school – unless a school official could show that a prohibitory action “was caused by something more than a mere desire to avoid the discomfort and unpleasantness that always accompany an unpopular viewpoint.”  The boundaries established by Tinker were fuzzy at best; since Tinker v. Des Moines, the Supreme Court and circuit courts have endlessly toyed with the confines of free speech in schools. In the well-known case of Bethel School District v. Fraser (1986), the Supreme Court added parameters to the notion of free speech in school; so too did Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier (1988) and Morse v. Frederick (2007).
With the limits of Tinker v. Des Moines unearthed in these cases, it was no surprise that the Easton Area School District v. B.H. case (2013) turned heads. In it, the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit defended two students’ right to wear “I ♥ boobies” bracelets, rather than defending the school district that penalized the bracelet-wearers. The case was criticized because of the apparent capriciousness of the court’s distinction between lewd and acceptable language.
Such vague distinctions exemplify a fundamental struggle between different court interpretations of students’ free speech: when and where does one cross the line legally? In the case of Live Oak High School in 2010, the court deemed the threat of student violence to be sufficient justification for the administrators’ actions. But regardless, the court’s decision in this case and cases like it are by no means rooted in definitive law. Tinker v. Des Moines, though establishing the framework for free speech in schools, is notoriously vague. As courts struggle to balance school authority and safety with first amendment rights, the scale is likely to tip back and forth for many cases to come.

References: v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v.