BONG HITS AND COURT RULINGS

In January 2002, in Juneau, Alaska, Joseph Frederick had the sort of
idea that makes a teenager seem like one of nature's mistakes. Last
week, after five years and the attention of 13 federal judges,
Frederick became a footnote in constitutional history.

His case illustrated how the extension of rights lead to the
proliferation of litigation. It also illustrated something agreeable
in a disagreeably angry era: How nine intelligent, conscientious
justices can civilly come to strikingly different conclusions about
undisputed facts.

This story actually began in 1965, in Des Moines, Iowa, when three
teenagers wore to school black armbands to protest the Vietnam War.
Their school said the bands or the students must go. The students kept
the bands, were suspended, sued and won a 7-2 Supreme Court victory in
1969. The court said that students do not "shed their constitutional
rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate."

One of the dissenting justices was Hugo Black, a fierce proponent of
First Amendment rights who nevertheless warned that the decision
denied schools "the power to control pupils."

Thirty-three years later, at a school-sanctioned and
faculty-supervised event during normal school hours, students were
watching the Olympic torch pass through Juneau en route to the 2002
Winter Olympics in Utah. Frederick and some friends, standing on a
public street across from their school, unfurled a banner reading
"Bong Hits 4 Jesus." The school's principal read that as advocacy of
an illegal act (marijuana use) in violation of the school's stated
policy and educational mission. She ordered the banner taken down.
Frederick refused and was suspended.

He sued, claiming his First Amendment free speech rights were
violated. A district court ruled against him, but a three-judge panel
of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with him.

Although accepting that the banner was at a school event and endorsed
drug use, the panel held that Frederick's rights had been violated
because there was no finding that his speech threatened a substantial
disruption of the school. Last week, the Supreme Court disagreed, 5-4.

Chief Justice John Roberts, joined by Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy,
Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, noted that in 1986 the court, in a
case arising from "lewd and indecent" student speech, did not conduct
a "substantial disruption" analysis. Instead, that court held that,
"in light of the special characteristics of the school environment,"
the rights of students "are not automatically coextensive with the
rights of adults in other settings." And in another case, the court
has recognized an "important -- indeed, perhaps compelling" public
interest in deterring drug use by children.

In concurring opinions, Thomas and Alito took strikingly different
positions. Thomas said that nothing in the history of public education
or the original understanding of the First Amendment suggests that
students have any justifiable First Amendment rights. To confer
constitutional protection on Frederick's "impertinence" would, Thomas
said, be "farcical." Alito, joined by Kennedy, stressed that in ruling
against Frederick the court was condoning only restriction of speech
advocating illegal drug use, and that the ruling "provides no support
for any restriction of speech that can plausibly be interpreted as
commenting on any political or social issue."

Stevens, dissenting and joined by David Souter and Ruth Bader
Ginsburg, argued, plausibly, that Frederick's "nonsense banner" with
its "oblique reference to drugs" hardly constituted "promoting" drug
use, or advocacy with likely and "feared" consequences. Stevens
mischievously wondered whether the majority justices would have
allowed Frederick's punishment if his offense had been a banner
reading "Wine Sips 4 Jesus," which could be read as advocating alcohol
use but also as -- communion wine? -- "a protected religious message."

Somewhere, a teenager with an abnormal interest in the court and a
normal zest for mischief might be thinking: I'll create a banner to
test whether banning "Wine Sips 4 Jesus" would infringe my religious
freedom. Endless distinctions can -- actually, must -- be drawn once a
subject becomes a matter of constitutional litigation.