Court Opinion

ID: 9817612
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 04:34:35.650276+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:41:40.450372
License: Public Domain

REINHARDT, Circuit Judge,
concurring in the order denying the petition for rehearing en banc:
The dissenters still don’t get the message — or Tinker! Advising a young high school or grade school student while he is in class that he and other gays and lesbians are shameful, and that God disapproves of him, is not simply “unpleasant and offensive.” It strikes at the very core of the young student’s dignity and self-worth. Similarly, the example Judge Ko-zinski offers, a T-shirt bearing the message, “Hitler Had the Right Idea” on one side and “Let’s Finish the Job!” on the other, serves to intimidate and injure young Jewish students in the same way, as would T-shirts worn by groups of white students bearing the message “Hide Your Sisters — The Blacks Are Coming.” Under the dissent’s view, large numbers of majority students could wear such shirts to class on a daily basis, at least until the time minority members chose to fight back physically and disrupt the school’s normal educational process. Tinker v. Des Moines Indep. Sch. Dist., 393 U.S. 503, 513, 89 S.Ct. 733, 21 L.Ed.2d 731 (1969).
Perhaps some of us are unaware of, or have forgotten, what it is like to be young, belong to a small minority group, and be subjected to verbal assaults and opprobrium while trying to get an education in a public school, or perhaps some are simply insensitive to the injury that public scorn and ridicule can cause young minority students. Or maybe some simply find it difficult to comprehend the extent of the injury attacks such as Harper’s cause gay students. Whatever the reason for the dissenters’ blindness, it is surely not beyond the authority of local school boards to attempt to protect young minority students against verbal persecution, and the exercise of that authority by school boards is surely consistent with Tinker’s protection of the right of individual students “to be secure and to be let alone.” Tinker, 393 U.S. at 508, 89 S.Ct. 733.