This article was originally published in 2009 and updated in 2017. Slocum, Rebecca. Reviews the "Seyfried v. Walton" court decision involving the cancellation of a school play by the superintendent. Daugherty, Denise. Another important distinction that has emerged from Supreme Court decisions is the difference between students in public elementary and secondary schools and those in public colleges and universities. French, David A. FIRE’s Guide to Religious Liberty on Campus. School officials punished the students and their parents. The Office for Intellectual Freedom of the American Library Association, March 21, 2018. The First AmendmentB. Smith and Superintendent Cairy then initiated expulsion charges against the teen, with the suit alleging their reasons were unconstitutional. In the interim, the teen was effectively suspended starting May 14. Philosophy professor Nicholas Meriwether is continuing his legal fight against Shawnee State University, arguing that the school’s insistence that he refer to a student by their preferred pronouns violates his First Amendment rights. Subscribe to MLive.com. First Amendment claims: The court has no trouble concluding that assuming the facts as alleged as true, school officials violated R.S.’s First Amendment rights. He teaches constitutional law and judicial process as well as specialized courses on the Bill of Rights and the First Amendment. Click Here: Watch The Story All rights reserved (About Us). The Jehovah’s Witnesses argued that saluting the flag was incompatible with their religious beliefs barring the worship of idols or graven images and thus constituted a violation of their free exercise of religion and freedom of speech rights. Years later, in Morse v. Frederick (2007), the Court created another exception to Tinker, ruling that public school officials can prohibit student speech that officials reasonably believe promotes illegal drug use. The suit is asking the court to declare defendants’ disciplinary actions against the teen unconstitutional, to enjoin them from continuing punishment against him, and to enjoin them from enforcing disciplinary policies against the teen for expression that occurs outside of school or school-sponsored activities. The department ended up agreeing to provide the IP address records. 101 (2017): 1801 -1861. The case was heard Thursday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit after it was dismissed by a judge earlier this year. A Hattiesburg man who was a student at Jones College is suing the school, its president, police chief and two school executives, claiming school policies governing protected speech under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution were violated on multiple occasions. In the landmark Supreme Court case Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (1969), the ACLU successfully challenged a school district’s decision to suspend three students for wearing armbands in protest of the Vietnam War. Nashville, Tenn.: First Amendment Center, 2003. National Constitution Center, March 16, 2018. v. Mahanoy Area School District, No. Philosophy professor Nicholas Meriwether is continuing his legal fight against Shawnee State University, arguing that the school’s insistence that he refer to a student by their preferred pronouns violates his First Amendment rights.. Four students at Saline High School have filed a federal lawsuit, contending that their First Amendment rights were violated when school officials suspended them for off-campus, online comments they made in a Snapchat discussion group. The district imposed a 10-day suspension on the teen, rather than expel him. Students on college and university campuses enjoy more academic freedom than secondary school students. When my First Amendment rights were violated by NWTC, I knew I had to stand up for my rights. "Student Rights in Public Schools." On June 30, 2020, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit issued its opinion in B.L. The first major Supreme Court decision protecting the First Amendment rights of children in a public elementary school was West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette  (1943). Private schools are not government actors and thus there is no state action trigger. The Barnette case began when several students who were Jehovah’s Witnesses refused to salute the flag for religious reasons. Using the vernacular of high school students, B.L. Understanding CensorshipB. The Free Speech Center. The NumbersB. Free Speech. Students in private universities—which are not subject to the requirements of the First Amendment—may rely on state laws to ensure certain basic freedoms. The Court decided that the students' First Amendment rights were not violated because the school exercised appropriate editorial control over "school-sponsored expressive activities" in order to limit speech that was "inconsistent" with its basic educational mission. The lawsuit states that on May 11, the plaintiff’s 14-year-old son created an Instagram account under a username that loosely corresponded with the name of a biology teacher at the high school. The latter group of students, presumably more mature, do not present the kind of disciplinary problems that educators encounter in grade school and high school, so the courts have deemed it reasonable to treat the two groups differently. Chemerinsky, Erwin. Hudson, David L. Jr. "9th Circuit: School officials can punish student for off-campus-created hit list," The First Amendment Encyclopedia, March 21, 2019. Police obtained IP addresses from the social media platform that established none of the posts deemed as inappropriate were posted by the initial teen, the suit alleges. Political free speech for students. Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 2008. The First Amendment Encyclopedia, Middle Tennessee State University (accessed Jan 10, 2021). (AP Photo, used with permission from the Associated Press), Public school students enjoy First Amendment protection depending on the type of expression and their age. © 2021 Advance Local Media LLC. The Supreme Court found that a school violated students’ First Amendment rights by suspending them for wearing black armbands as an antiwar protest (an example of what’s known as “symbolic speech”). For example, in Hosty v. Carter (7th Cir. “Free Speech in Public Schools:Has the Supreme Court Created a Haven for Viewpoint Discrimination in School-Sponsored Speech.” Georgia State University Law Review 20 (Summer 2004):1061–1085. Cathy Kuhlmeier and two other students from the class sued the school, claiming their 1 st Amendment rights had been violated. The different level of protection accorded to students in institutions of higher education, who are generally eighteen years or older and thus legally adults, is evident from several cases. The teen’s “speech occurred completely off-campus and failed to cause substantial disruption to the school or to forecast substantial disruption to the school,” the suit reads. Bomboy, Scott. Philadelphia: Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, 2002. More recent lower court decisions also have applied the Hazelwood standard in cases involving curricular disputes, professionalism concerns, and even the online speech of college and university students. It should be the parents, not the school.”. Nott, Lata and Gene Policinski. 116 in Manhattan salutes the flag in 1957. Teachers and the Law. “In a cooperative and truthful fashion, (the teen) explained that he created a non-public Instagram account using [a] parodic name … and had posted the Gas Pump Post but none of the other posts deemed ‘inappropriate’ by Defendants’ contented-based viewpoint,” the suit states. Some of their posts were described by the defendants as “inappropriate,” the suit states. "Freedom of the Press for Student Papers." ABERDEEN, MS – A Mississippi federal court today ruled that school officials violated a lesbian student’s First Amendment rights when it canceled the high school prom rather than let the student attend with her girlfriend. Barnette, did the U.S. Supreme Court explicitly extend First Amendment protection to students attending public schools. In Barnette, the Court relied primarily on the free-speech clause rather than the free-exercise clause. 19-1842 (3rd Cir. The Supreme Court overturned the state's law requiring all public school students to salute the flag and recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Salgado, Richard. Consequences of CensorshipHow Big a Problem Is Censorship?A. Cairy, however, concluded the teen committed “gross misbehavior” in violation of the school’s student handbook’s General Rules and Recommendations. A group of Jehovah’s Witnesses challenged the state’s law requiring all public school students to salute the flag and recite the Pledge of Allegiance. The Free Speech Center. The Supreme Court clarified in, The first major Supreme Court decision protecting the First Amendment rights of children in a public elementary school was. “Nothing about the Gas Pump Post is a true threat, defamation, or any other exception to the First Amendment’s prohibition on abridging speech to warrant governmental punishment.”. 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