BONG GOES STUDENTS' FREE SPEECH

U.S. Supreme Court Rules 5-4 In Favour Of School Who Kicked Out Boy
Over A Banner

No marijuana jokes, please, we're Americans.

That was the message yesterday from a divided United States Supreme
Court, which ruled against an Alaska student who was 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 school 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 most bizarre - and 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 simply to attract television coverage - and that he
never intended to promote the use of marijuana.

Although he was standing on a sidewalk off school property at the
time, 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
administration argued that students' rights to free speech are
limited when they violate a school's educational mission, including
advising teenagers against drug use.

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.