Opinion ID: 1442370
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Plaintiffs-Appellants' Equal Protection Claim

Text: In the circumstances of this case, our analysis of Plaintiffs-Appellants' Equal Protection claim is essentially the same as our analysis of Plaintiffs-Appellants' First Amendment claim. See R.A.V., 505 U.S. at 384 n. 4, 112 S.Ct. 2538 (noting that the Supreme Court itself has occasionally fused the First Amendment into the Equal Protection Clause . . . with the acknowledgment. . . that the First Amendment underlies its analysis). Because the distinction between the wearing of racially divisive and racially inclusive symbols pertains to expressive conduct within the protection of the First Amendment, this provision of the school's dress code must be [narrowly] tailored to serve a substantial governmental interest. Mosley, 408 U.S. at 99, 101, 92 S.Ct. 2286. The government interest in this casethe school's mission to educate its students in a learning environment conducive to fostering both knowledge and democratic responsibilityis undeniably a substantial one. The question of whether the dress code's ban on racially divisive symbols is narrowly tailored to that purpose asks us to inquire whether the ban meets the standard set forth in Tinker. As we have demonstrated above, the evidence on the record establishes that the school enforces the dress code in a viewpoint-neutral manner to ban those racially divisive symbols that the school reasonably forecasts will substantially and materially disrupt schoolwork and school discipline. We therefore hold that the dress code's ban on racially divisive symbols is narrowly tailored to the state and the school's substantial interest in educating students, and we affirm the district court's grant of summary judgment to Defendants-Appellees on Plaintiffs-Appellants' Equal Protection claim. We reject Plaintiffs-Appellants' argument that the instant case is analogous to the Supreme Court's decision in Police Department of City of Chicago v. Mosley . In Mosley, the Court invalidated a city ordinance that placed geographic and temporal restrictions on picketing outside a school but exempted peaceful labor picketing. 408 U.S. at 92-94, 92 S.Ct. 2286. The Court concluded that the ordinance's content-based restriction on speech could be upheld only if necessary to serve a substantial government interest in a narrowly tailored manner. Id. at 98-99, 92 S.Ct. 2286. The Court further determined that the ordinance was not narrowly tailored to the city's interest in preventing disruption by the . . . excesses of some nonlabor picketing because it targeted both peaceful and violent [nonlabor] picketing. Id. at 101-02, 92 S.Ct. 2286. The school argues that Mosley is not applicable because it involved a challenge to a facially discriminatory rather than a facially neutral regulation on speech. But that is not the critical distinction between the cases; as stated above, we apply strict scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause to a statute infringing on speech protected by the First Amendment, whether plaintiffs bring a facial or as-applied challenge. The dispositive distinction between Mosley and the instant case is that Mosley involved adult speech in a public forum, while the instant case involves student speech in a public school, which is a limited public forum. Thus, Tinker sets the guiding standard for the instant case while that was not true of Mosley. Plaintiffs-Appellants argue that under Mosley, the school needs to show that the Confederate flag is clearly more disruptive than other flags. Plaintiffs-Appellants Br. at 16 (quoting Mosley, 408 U.S. at 100, 92 S.Ct. 2286). Plaintiffs-Appellants argue further that the determination must be made on an individualized basis. Plaintiffs-Appellants Br. at 16-18. These arguments do not advance our resolution of Plaintiffs-Appellants' Equal Protection claim. By complying with the Tinker standard, the school has already shown that the Confederate flag and other racially divisive symbols have a far greater disruptive effect than symbols not similarly prohibited. Moreover, under Tinker, individualized analysis of each student's clothing every day, see Plaintiffs-Appellants Br. at 16 and Reply Br. at 11, would be unnecessary in a school environment in which school officials reasonably believe that depictions on clothing of an object, such as the Confederate flag, would cause disruptions. See Lowery, 497 F.3d at 591-92 (holding that under the Tinker standard a school does not need to wait until a disruption has actually occurred before regulating student speech).