Opinion ID: 1275984
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The lead opinion's application of Connick in a student-speech case is unprecedented

Text: Although the lead opinion purports to apply Tinker, what it actually applies is the public-concern test announced by the Supreme Court in Connick. The Ninth Circuit rejected this very approach in Pinard v. Clatskanie School District 6J, 467 F.3d 755 (9th Cir.2006), and I do not think that we should consider it here. See Pinard, 467 F.3d at 766 (Although Connick 's personal matter/public concern distinction is the appropriate mechanism for determining the parameters of a public employer's need to regulate the workplace, neither we, the Supreme Court nor any other federal court of appeals has held such a distinction applicable in student speech cases, and we decline to do so here.). I see no justification for grafting this requirement onto Tinker in the absence of Supreme Court caselaw instructing us to do so. Tinker has been in force for several decades now, and the Supreme Court's recent holding in Morse does nothing to undercut its application to the facts of the present case. The lead opinion states that [t]he key to understanding Connick and the instant case is that neither case is fundamentally about the right to express one's opinion, but rather the ability of the government to set restrictions on voluntary programs it administers. Lead Op. at 599. It goes on to state that the First Amendment does not guarantee that there will be no losers in intra-office politics. Id. That may be true as a general proposition, but the fact remains that government employees and high school athletes are not similarly situated, despite the lead opinion's analysis to the contrary. Whether we think that student athletes have greater similarities to government employees than the general student body, Lead Op. at 597, is not determinative. What is determinative is that they are not similarly situated under existing caselaw. Furthermore, the Supreme Court has specifically given us one test for students and another test for public employees. Applying Connick to the present case seems especially inappropriate given the Supreme Court's recent decision in Morse. In Morse, a high school senior unfurled a banner bearing the phrase BONG HiTS 4 JESUS across the street from his school while watching the Olympic Torch Relay pass through town. Morse, 127 S.Ct. at 2622. The viewing of the relay was a school-sanctioned event. Id. Because the principal thought that the banner promoted illegal drug use, she asked the student to take it down, but the student refused. Id. The student was suspended as a result, and he subsequently sued the school, alleging that the school had violated his First Amendment rights. Id. at 2623. Morse gave the Supreme Court an opportunity to revisit Tinker and, had Justice Thomas's view carried the day, to overrule it. See Morse, 127 S.Ct. at 2630 (Thomas, J., concurring) (writing separately to state his view that the standard set forth in [ Tinker ] is without basis in the Constitution). But the majority did not go that far, confirming only that the rule of Tinker is not the only basis for restricting student speech. Id. at 2627. The Court's holding was a narrow onenamely, that a principal may, consistent with the First Amendment, restrict student speech at a school event, when that speech is reasonably viewed as promoting illegal drug use. Id. at 2622. And in reaching this holding, the Court emphasized the importantindeed, perhaps compelling interest in deterring drug use among schoolchildren. Id. at 2628. Given the facts of Morse, the Supreme Court could well have chosen to add a public-concern requirement to the traditional Tinker analysis, but it did not do so. The school superintendent's administrative decision in Morse highlighted the fact that the student's speech was not political or espousing a religious viewpoint, but instead was a fairly silly message promoting illegal drug usage in the midst of a school activity. Id. at 2623. But the Court did not depend on this fact in its analysis. Nor did it undercut the force of Tinker in a way that has application to the facts of the present case. Justice Alito's concurrence suggests just the opposite. See id. at 2638 (Alito, J., concurring) (writing separately to emphasize the special dangers of illegal drug use as grounds for greater regulation of student speech, but joining the majority opinion only with the understanding that the opinion does not endorse any further extension of speech restrictions in public schools). Vague notions of teamwork and unity are simply not compelling school interests in the way that the prevention of illegal drug use is. Nothing in Morse suggests that anything other than a standard Tinker analysis is appropriate in the present case, and Justice Alito's concurrence explicitly suggests otherwise. See id. (But I do not read the opinion to mean that there are necessarily any grounds for such regulation that are not already recognized in the holdings of this Court.). I therefore would not alter First Amendment jurisprudence in the way that the lead opinion does.