Court Opinion

ID: 9631460
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 10:39:04.444528+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:29:23.189964
License: Public Domain

ROVNER, Circuit Judge,
concurring in the judgment.
I agree that we should reverse and remand this case to the district court with instructions to enter an injunction allowing Nuxoll to wear a shirt bearing the slogan “Be Happy, Not Gay” on the school day following the Day of Silence. I view this as a simple case. We are bound by the rule of Tinker v. Des Moines Indep. Cmty. Sch. Dist., 393 U.S. 503, 89 S.Ct. 733, 21 L.Ed.2d 731 (1969), a case that the majority portrays in such a convoluted fashion that the discussion folds in on itself like a Mobius strip.1 Tinker straight-forwardly tells us that, in order for school officials to justify prohibition of a particular expression of opinion, they must be able to show that this “action was caused by something more than a mere desire to avoid the discomfort and unpleasantness that always accompany an unpopular viewpoint.” 393 U.S. at 509, 89 S.Ct. 733. Under Tinker, students may express their opinions, even on controversial subjects, so long as they do so “without ‘materially and substantial*677ly interfering] with the requirements of appropriate discipline in the operation of the school’ and without colliding with the rights of others.” 393 U.S. at 512-13, 89 S.Ct. 733 (quoting Burnside v. Byars, 363 F.2d 744, 749 (5th Cir.1966)).2 The school district has “not demonstrate[d] any facts which might reasonably have led school authorities to forecast substantial disruption of or material interference with school activities,” and no such disruption occurred two years earlier when Nuxoll’s co-plaintiff wore such a shirt to school following the Day of Silence. Tinker, 393 U.S. at 514, 89 S.Ct. 733. Therefore, this particular expression must be allowed.
Contrary to the majority’s characterization, Tinker is not a case about viewpoint discrimination and is not distinguishable from the instant case. Supra at 8. Tinker involved students who wished to wear black armbands to protest the Vietnam war. School officials would not allow the armbands although they did allow students to wear other symbols of political or controversial significance, including political campaign buttons and the Iron Cross, a symbol that is associated with Nazism. The Court concluded that “the prohibition of expression of one particular opinion, at least without evidence that it is necessary to avoid material and substantial interference with schoolwork or discipline, is not constitutionally permissible.” Tinker, 393 U.S. at 511, 89 S.Ct. 733. Tinker reveals nothing about whether the school allowed symbols or other expressions of opinion favorable to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam war, and so there is no reason to read Tinker as a case about viewpoint. It is more appropriately characterized as a discussion about subject matter discrimination, although the opinion is not limited to the circumstance where the school has banned all discussion of a particular subject. The majority attempts to turn Tinker into a viewpoint case by stating that a school ban on “all discussion of the Vietnam war would in reality have been taking sides,” supra at 11, because the debate over the war was initiated by those opposed to it. And here is the Mobius strip. Under the majority’s reasoning, allowing open debate on any subject would constitute taking the side of the anti-staiws quo. Open debate could never simply be open debate; it would constitute “taking sides,” in particular taking the side of the party opposed to the status quo. Open debate is the very value preserved by the First Amendment and yet the majority reduces it to stealth viewpoint expression. The majority expends much ink trying to strike a balance between the interests of free speech and ordered learning, a discussion which sounds remarkably similar to the rule of Hazelwood Sch. Dist. v. Kuhlmeier, 484 U.S. 260, 108 S.Ct. 562, 98 L.Ed.2d 592 (1988), where the Supreme Court set a balancing rule for school-sponsored speech. This case does not involve school-sponsored speech, and there is no need for us to strike a new balance; the Supreme Court has already set the applicable standard in Tinker.
Moreover, I heartily disagree with my brothers about the value of the speech and speech rights of high school students, which the majority repeatedly denigrates. Supra, at 4, 5, 7 and 10. Youth are often the vanguard of social change. Anyone who thinks otherwise has not been paying attention to the civil rights movement, the women’s rights movement, the anti-war protests for Vietnam and Iraq, and the recent presidential primaries where the youth voice and the youth vote are having *678a substantial impact. And now youth are leading a broad, societal change in attitude towards homosexuals, forming alliances among lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered (“LGBT”) and heterosexual students to discuss issues of importance related to sexual orientation. They have initiated a dialogue in which Nuxoll wishes to participate. The young adults to whom the majority refers as “kids” and “children” are either already eligible, or a few short years away from being eligible to vote, to contract, to marry, to serve in the military, and to be tried as adults in criminal prosecutions. To treat them as children in need of protection from controversy, to blithely dismiss their views as less valuable than those of adults, supra at 10, is contrary to the values of the First Amendment. Justice Brennan eloquently stated this for the Court more than forty years ago, and his words ring especially true today:
The vigilant protection of constitutional freedoms is nowhere more vital than in the community of American schools. The classroom is peculiarly the marketplace of ideas. The Nation’s future depends upon leaders trained through wide exposure to that robust exchange of ideas which discovers truth out of a multitude of tongues, rather than through any kind of authoritative selection.
Tinker, 393 U.S. at 512, 89 S.Ct. 733 (quoting Keyishian v. Board of Regents, 385 U.S. 589, 603, 87 S.Ct. 675, 17 L.Ed.2d 629 (1967)) (internal citations and quotation marks omitted). See also Hodgkins ex rel. Hodgkins v. Peterson, 355 F.3d 1048, 1055 (7th Cir.2004) (“The strength of our democracy depends on a citizenry that knows and understands its freedoms, exercises them responsibly, and guards them vigilantly. Young adults ... are not suddenly granted the full panoply of constitutional rights on the day they attain the age of majority. We not only permit but expect youths to exercise those liberties-to learn to think for themselves, to give voice to their opinions, to hear and evaluate competing points of view-so that they might attain the right to vote at age eighteen with the tools to exercise that right.”) The majority also treats the subject matter of sexual orientation as lacking importance, apparently failing to notice that, for the last decade or two, state and national legislatures have been awash with debates over the limits placed on the rights- of LGBT persons, and that presidential candidates are often subjected to litmus tests on these very issues. Finally, there may be no more important time than adolescence for individuals to contemplate issues relating to their sexual identity. These are important issues and the voices of young adults add much to the discussion.3
My brothers also wonder whether this slogan is actually derogatory, noting that it is a play on the words “happy” and “gay.” Supra at 12. That it is a play on words does not change its ultimate meaning, however. Nuxoll tells us that he intends the slogan to convey the message that “homosexual behavior is contrary to the teachings of the bible, damaging to the partici*679pants and society at large, and does not lead to happiness.” Throughout his brief, he claims to be criticizing homosexual “conduct” and “behavior” although his four-word polemic “Be Happy, Not Gay” does little to convey this message and instead seems to attack homosexual identity. Nonetheless, the statement is clearly intended to derogate homosexuals. Teenagers today often use the word “gay” as a generic term of disparagement. They might say, “That sweater is so gay” as a way of insulting the look of the garment. In this way, Nuxoll’s statement is really a double-play on words because “gay” formerly meant “happy” in common usage, and now “gay,” in addition to meaning “homosexual” is also often used as a general insult. Nuxoll’s statement easily fits the school’s definition of “disparaging” and would meet that standard for most listeners. Moreover, the idea that “not gay” is a synonym for “straight,” supra at 12, fails to recognize the many nuances of sexual orientation that have been apparent since 1948, when Alfred Kinsey first set forth his zero-to-six Kinsey Scale, defining a continuum of sexuality from exclusively heterosexual on one end to exclusively homosexual on the other end. I scarcely know where to begin with the Pepsi/Coke analogy and even the majority seems to realize the comparison misses the mark. I would add that it misses the mark by a rather wide margin. In any case, there is no doubt that the slogan is disparaging. That said, it is not the kind of speech that would materially and substantially interfere with school activities. I suspect that similar uses of the word “gay” abound in the halls of Neuqua Valley High School and virtually every other high school in the United States without causing any substantial interruption to the educational process. There is a significant difference between expressing one’s religiously-based disapproval of homosexuality and targeting LGBT students for harassment. Though probably offensive to most LGBT students, the former is not likely by itself to create a hostile environment. Certainly, this is not a case like Nabozny v. Podlesny, 92 F.3d 446 (7th Cir.1996), where students repeatedly called a gay classmate a “faggot,” struck him, spit on him, threw him into a urinal, beat him to such a degree that he suffered internal bleeding, and subjected him to a mock rape in a classroom while a few dozen people looked on and laughed at him. So severe and constant and enduring was his classmates’ abuse, that Nabozny twice attempted suicide. The defendants here are unlikely to find themselves on the “razor’s edge” of Nabozny, supra at 11, as a result of Nuxoll’s t-shirt.
And what lesson would we teach young adults about the importance of our Constitutional rights if the judiciary took the “hands off’ approach to school regulation of speech favored by my brothers? Supra at 5.4 This time I turn to Justice Jackson, speaking for the Court more than sixty years ago:
The Fourteenth Amendment, as now applied to the States, protects the citizen against the State itself and all of its creatures — Boards of Education not excepted. These have, of course, important, delicate, and highly discretionary functions, but none that they may not perform within the limits of the Bill of Rights. 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 princi-*680pies of our government as mere platitudes.
West Virginia State Bd. of Educ. v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624, 637, 63 S.Ct. 1178, 87 L.Ed. 1628 (1943) (quoted in Tinker, 393 U.S. at 507, 89 S.Ct. 733). The First Amendment provides the school with an opportunity for a discussion about the values of free speech and respect for differing points of view but it does not grant a license to shut down dissension because of an “undifferentiated fear or apprehension of disturbance.” Tinker, 393 U.S. at 508, 89 S.Ct. 733. Contrary to the majority’s view that “free speech and ordered learning” are “competing interests,” supra at 7, I would argue that these values are compatible. The First Amendment as interpreted by Tinker is consistent with the school’s mission to teach by encouraging debate on controversial topics while also allowing the school to limit the debate when it becomes substantially disruptive. Nuxoll’s slogan-adorned t-shirt comes nowhere near that standard. For all of these reasons, I respectfully concur in the judgment.

. A Mobius strip is a “continuous, one-sided surface formed by twisting one end of a rectangular strip through 180 ° about the longitudinal axis of the strip and attaching this end to the other.” Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language, (RHR Press, 2001).

. I will hereafter use the term “substantial disruption” as shorthand for the Tinker standard.

. The majority also mischaracterizes the plaintiff's position as one seeking the outer limits of the Chaplinsky "fighting words” doctrine. See Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568, 62 S.Ct. 766, 86 L.Ed. 1031 (1942). True, the plaintiff ultimately seeks to expand the limits of his speech regarding his religious views of homosexuality, but he concedes that he is limited by Tinker, not Chaplinsky. Moreover, at oral argument, he limited his request for relief at this stage to a preliminary injunction that would allow him to wear his “Be Happy, Not Gay” shirt on the day following the Day of Silence. There is no need for us to address the policy as a whole or any other speech at this point in the litigation. I therefore reserve for another time my own grave doubts as to the Constitutionality of the school’s policy on its face.

. The majority limits its suggested "hands off” approach with the words “within reason” but seems to approve much broader discretion for school authorities than Tinker or its progeny would allow.