Court Opinion

ID: 9478926
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 07:02:48.720087+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:46:42.324998
License: Public Domain

*765MERRITT, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
The Court has applied the wrong First Amendment test to this student’s political speech and has therefore reached the wrong result.
The applicable First Amendment cases hold that when a high school student engages in political or “pure speech” in a school forum the student is protected by the First Amendment under a test substantially similar to that for adults. In the compulsory flag salute case, Justice Jackson, speaking for the Court, said:
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. ... 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 principles of our government as mere platitudes.
West Virginia State Bd. of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624, 637, 63 S.Ct. 1178, 1185, 87 L.Ed. 1628 (1943).
In the black arm band protest case, Tinker v. DesMoines Independent Community School Dist., 393 U.S. 503, 89 S.Ct. 733, 21 L.Ed.2d 731 (1969), the Court said that in political speech cases students
may not be confined to the expression of those sentiments that are officially approved. In the absence of a specific showing of constitutionally valid reasons to regulate their speech, students are entitled to freedom of expression of their views.
Id. at 511, 89 S.Ct. at 739 (emphasis added). Neither Barnette nor Tinker has been overruled. They continue to teach that the First Amendment protects the political speech of public-school students.
After the passage just quoted, Tinker goes on to state the “constitutionally valid reasons” for regulating student speech. The protected category of political speech does not include
conduct by the student, in class or out of it, which for any reason — whether it stems from time, place, or type of behavior — materially disrupts classwork or involves substantial disorder or invasion of the rights of others....
Id. at 513, 89 S.Ct. at 740. In the student political speech cases, the Supreme Court makes clear that the question is not one of “civility,” “rudeness” or “bad taste” as my brothers seem to think. The question is one of “disruption” and “substantial disorder.”
Recent cases permitting schools to regulate speech of secondary school students have explicitly declined to overrule Barnette and Tinker. In Bethel School Dist. No. 403 v. Fraser, 478 U.S. 675 [106 S.Ct. 3159, 92 L.Ed.2d 549] (1986), the Supreme Court specifically noted that the regulation of sexually explicit and salacious student speech was “unrelated to any political viewpoint” and, thus, did not implicate the rule announced in Tinker. Bethel School Dist., 478 U.S. at 685 [106 S.Ct. at 3166]. And in Hazelwood School Dist. v. Kuhlmeier, [484 U.S. 260], 108 S.Ct. 562 [98 L.Ed.2d 592] (1988), the Supreme Court held that the rule of Tinker need not apply where a school wishes to “refuse to lend its name and resources to the dissemination of student expression.” Hazelwood, 108 S.Ct. at 570. The sort of “legitimate pedagogical concern” that warranted the regulation of student speech in Hazelwood was a school’s decision not to permit a student paper to invade the right of privacy of an unwed, pregnant student.
By ignoring the co-existence in our law of Barnette and Tinker on the one hand, and Bethel and Hazelwood on the other, the majority virtually erases the rule of the earlier cases. Political speech of students that does not threaten to foment “substantial disorder,” “disruption” or “invasion of privacy” is still protected under the First Amendment. Because the majority has used the wrong standard, it has reached the wrong result. There is no evidence in this case of “substantial disorder,” “disruption” or “invasion of privacy.”
Dean Poling’s speech to 800 students at the high school assembly was “political speech,” pure and simple. It was not a vulgar speech like the one found unprotected in Bethel or a gross invasion of the right of privacy of an unwed, pregnant *766student as in Hazelwood. Poling was running for president of the student body of his school. He made a tough populist speech, short but not sweet. His main point was this:
If you want to break the iron grip of this school, vote for me for President. I can try to bring back student rights that you have missed and maybe get things that you have always wanted. All you have to do is vote for me, Dean Poling.
His fellow students from the hills and hollows of rural upper East Tennessee stood and cheered, but they were not disruptive. Although critical of the administration and of one particular teacher, the speech cannot be classified as one which “materially disrupts dasswork or involves substantial disorder or invasion of the rights of others.” Tinker, 393 U.S. at 513, 89 S.Ct. at 740. If the school administration can silence a student criticizing it for being narrow minded and authoritarian, how can students engage in political dialogue with their educators about their education?
For the foregoing reasons, I respectfully dissent.