SUSPENSION FOR BONG BANNER JUSTIFIED, TOP U.S. COURT RULES

5-4 Decision Backs Restriction On Free Speech In Schools

WASHINGTON -- A divided United States Supreme Court ruled Monday
against an Alaska student kicked out of his high school for unfurling
a "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" banner on a public sidewalk.

In a 5-4 decision that restricts the free speech rights of U.S.
students, the high court said a principal was justified in suspending
18-year-old Joseph Frederick because his homemade banner promoted the
use of drugs.

"Student speech celebrating illegal drug use ... poses a particular
challenge for school officials working to protect those entrusted to
their care from the dangers of drug abuse," Chief Justice John
Roberts wrote in the majority opinion. "The First Amendment does not
require schools to tolerate, at school events, student expression
that contributes to those dangers."

The ruling closes one of the potentially significant cases involving
free speech to reach the Supreme Court in two decades.

It began when Frederick displayed his five-metre-long banner during
an Olympic torch relay event in Juneau, Alaska, ahead of the 2002
Winter Olympics, held that year in Salt Lake City. Frederick, then a
senior at Juneau-Douglas high, insisted the banner was intended as a
publicity prank and that he never intended to promote the use of
marijuana. Although he was standing on a sidewalk, principal Deborah
Morse bolted across the street, seized the banner and subsequently
suspended Frederick for 10 days.

In the majority ruling, Roberts described the "Bong Hits 4 Jesus"
banner as "offensive to some, amusing to others," but said the
principal's view that it could inspire drug abuse "is plainly a
reasonable one."

The "Bong hits" controversy drew national attention when Frederick
sued the Juneau school board and even prompted the Bush
administration to submit a brief supporting the principal. The ruling
also highlighted a deepening divide on the U.S. Supreme Court between
liberal justices and the more conservative judges headed by Roberts,
appointed two years ago by President George W. Bush.

In a stinging minority dissent, 87-year-old Justice John Paul Stevens
said student speech should only be limited when it violates specific
rules or "expressly advocates" illegal behaviour.

"This nonsense banner does neither, and the court does serious
violence to the First Amendment in upholding, indeed lauding, a
school's decision to punish Frederick for expressing a view with
which it disagreed," Stevens wrote.

"Although this case began with a silly, nonsensical banner, it ends
with the court inventing out of whole cloth a special First Amendment
rule permitting the censorship of any student speech that mentions
drugs, at least so long as someone could perceive that speech to
contain a latent pro-drug message."