Court Opinion

ID: 9796618
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 04:01:01.840233+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:50:40.370577
License: Public Domain

ARMSTRONG, J.,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I join in the majority’s resolution of all issues except plaintiffs’ claim under 42 USC section 1983.1 would hold that the district violated Chris’s* 1 rights under the First Amendment, as the United States Supreme Court has construed it, and that the trial court therefore erred in dismissing the section 1983 claim.
The district expelled Chris because he helped publish and distribute an underground newspaper.2 ****Exactly what Chris did, and exactly why the district expelled him, are essential to determining the section 1983 claim. Two things are particularly important. First, the newspaper was entirely unofficial. Chris and the others involved in publishing it did so off-campus, on their own time, using nonschool equipment. The only on-campus activity was distributing the newspaper. Nothing about the newspaper even suggests that it was an *401official school publication — if anything, it screams its unofficial nature — and no reasonable person could believe that it spoke for the school or the district.
The second significant point is that the reasons that the district asserted for expelling Chris are more limited than the possible reasons that the majority discusses. Chris received a hearing before the district expelled him. Allan Frickey, an assistant superintendent, reviewed the hearings officer’s recommendation and made the final decision to expel Chris. In a deposition that was entered into evidence at trial, Frickey testified that he expelled Chris because he violated the law, specifically ORS 339.250(4)(a), which authorizes discipline of a student who uses or displays “profane or obscene language[.]” Frickey also stated that he was concerned about what he described as the material’s threatening language, which he identified as threats of criminal action against employees and the school building. He did not act because the newspaper or its distribution was disruptive, but the fact that the distribution was unauthorized played a role. However, he also testified that the primary reason that the district prohibits distributing material without authorization is to prevent purely commercial fliers or other handouts; it would not prohibit, for instance, distributing Time magazine. Finally, Frickey testified that the directory containing teacher names and telephone numbers was not confidential and that there were no restrictions on distributing or copying it.
Among other things, those facts show that two of the three United States Supreme Court cases that the majority identifies as potentially relevant to this claim, Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier, 484 US 260, 108 S Ct 562, 98 L Ed 2d 592 (1988); Bethel School Dist. No. 403 v. Fraser, 478 US 675, 106 S Ct 3159, 92 L Ed 2d 549 (1986), have little or nothing to do with it, leaving Tinker v. Des Moines School Dist., 393 US 503, 89 S Ct 733, 21 L Ed 2d 731 (1969), as the controlling case. Both Kuhlmeier and Fraser involved a school district’s ability to control what happened under the district’s official sponsorship, an issue that is legally distinct from a district’s ability to control what a student does acting entirely independently.
*402In Fraser, the student gave a speech containing sexual imagery at an official student assembly that the school required students to attend. In Kuhlmeier the school’s principal deleted articles from an official school newspaper that students edited under the supervision of a teacher as part of a class for which they received credit. The Court emphasized those points in its decisions. See Fraser, 478 US at 681 (the court considered the First Amendment protection “accorded to Fraser’s utterances and actions before an official high school assembly attended by 600 students”), 478 US at 685 (high school assembly or classroom is no place for sexually explicit monologue directed to unsuspecting students; it was appropriate for school to disassociate itself); Kuhlmeier, 484 US at 270-71 (question whether First Amendment requires school to tolerate párticular student speech is different from whether it requires a school affirmatively to promote particular student speech; educators are entitled to greater control over second category than over first). Neither Fraser nor Kuhlmeier, thus, helps us in evaluating the constitutionality of the district’s actions towards Chris. Cases that involve official or state-sponsored speech simply do not apply to a student’s independent, unequivocally unofficial actions.
The controlling case, rather, is Tinker. In that case, the students were suspended for wearing black arm bands to school as part of a protest against the Vietnam War. They engaged in no disorder or disturbance of the school’s activities; there were not even any group demonstrations. The district court held that the school’s action was reasonable because of a fear of disturbance from the students’ actions. The Supreme Court rejected that rationale, pointing out that
“in our system, undifferentiated fear or apprehension of disturbances is not enough to overcome the right to freedom of expression. Any variation from the majority’s opinion may inspire fear. 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 this risk, and our history says that it is this sort of hazardous freedom — this kind of openness — that is the basis of our national strength and of the independence and vigor of Americans who grow up and live in this relatively permissive, often disputatious, society.”
*403393 US at 508-09 (citation omitted).
The Court held that, in order for the school officials to justify prohibiting a particular expression of opinion, they had to show something more than a mere desire to avoid the discomfort and unpleasantness that accompany unpopular viewpoints. Rather, they had to show that the forbidden conduct would materially and substantially interfere with the requirements of appropriate discipline in the operation of the school. In Tinker the district court did not make such a finding, and there was no evidence to support it. Rather, the school officials simply wanted to avoid the controversy over the Vietnam War. 393 US at 509-10. That, however, was not permissible.
“In our system, state-operated schools may not be enclaves of totalitarianism. School officials do not possess absolute authority over their students. Students in school * * * are possessed of fundamental rights which the state must respect, just as they themselves must respect their obligations to the State. * * * [Students] may not be confined to the expression of those sentiments that are officially approved.”
Id. at 511. Those principles are not limited to supervised discussion in the classroom; personal intercommunication among the students is both an inevitable part of attending school and an important part of the educational process. A student may express opinions at school, even on controversial subjects, so long as he or she does so without materially and substantially interfering with the requirements of appropriate discipline or colliding with the rights of others. Id. at 512-13.3
When I examine the district’s stated reasons for expelling Chris in light of Tinker, I do not see how we can sustain its action. According to Frickey, he expelled Chris because of vulgar and threatening language in the newspaper. Even assuming that vulgar language by itself could somehow constitutionally be a basis for disciplining a high *404school student, the vulgarity in the newspaper was no different from what is presently common in many other sources. As to the allegedly threatening language, Frickey did not claim that distributing the newspaper caused any disruption at the school, and he admitted that one thing that was apparently particularly disconcerting to teachers — listing home telephone numbers — did not violate any district policy or regulation. In addition, there is no evidence that Chris or anyone else engaged in, or planned or prepared to engage in, any of the suggested conduct that the majority quotes. The newspaper was not the equivalent of crying “fire” in a crowded theater.
Certainly some of the content of the newspaper, including portions of what Chris wrote, could be disconcerting to some readers, although the most disconcerting portions are apparently widely available on the Internet. Speech, however, is often disconcerting. People who believe strongly in what they say do not always speak in dulcet tones, and their voices sometimes grate on their hearers. That is the nature of the open society that the First Amendment protects; under Tinker, schools are part of that open society. Given the climate in the country in December 1965, when the students in Tinker wore their armbands, I suspect that their actions were at least as disconcerting as were Chris’s actions in this case. The Supreme Court held, nevertheless, that the suspensions violated the students’ rights under the First Amendment. I would hold, similarly, that the district violated Chris’s rights and that he has a claim under section 1983.1 dissent from the majority’s contrary conclusion.

 I will use the majority’s short terms for describing those involved.

 As the majority notes, the Ninth Circuit generally reviews the facts de novo rather than under the normal federal “clearly erroneous” standard when the district court has upheld a restriction of speech as constitutional. 169 Or App at 394.1 agree that we should follow that standard in this case, and I therefore state the facts based on my review of the record.

 Those statements remain good law. Indeed, the primary if not only relevance of Fraser and Kuhlmeier to this case is that they reaffirm Tinker’s basic holding in this regard. See Kuhlmeier, 484 US at 266; Fraser 478 US at 680.