STUDENTS AND SPEECH

The Issue: Nonsensical "bong hits" banner goes to court. Our View:
And schools gain a bit more control.

In 1969, the Supreme Court ruled that students do not "shed their
constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the
schoolhouse gate." It was a good ruling with exceptions that allowed
school officials to bar speech that advocated dangerous or illegal
conduct or was substantially disruptive.

The Roberts Supreme Court has expanded schools' powers to regulate
speech in a case in which the speech in question was described as
"cryptic," by Chief Justice John Roberts in the majority, and as
"nonsense," by Justice John Paul Stevens dissenting.

A more rugged description would be just stupid.

The phrase was the now infamous "BONG HiTS 4 JESUS," words now
enshrined in First Amendment lore.

It was written on a 14-foot banner that Alaska high school student
Joseph Frederick unfurled as the Olympic Torch Relay was coming through Juneau.

Frederick was not on school property; he was on a sidewalk opposite
his school. But the presence of the students along the route was
school-sponsored. Frederick said he displayed the banner, whose
inscription even he found meaningless, to get on television.

Principal Deborah Morse confiscated the banner and suspended
Frederick for 10 days on the grounds that the message conflicted with
the school's mission of fighting illegal drug use.

By 5-4, the court agreed.

But Frederick did not seek to advocate or persuade.

Wrote Stevens: "The notion that the message on this banner would
actually persuade either the average student or even the dumbest one
to change his or her behavior is most implausible."

By the majority's reasoning, the principal could have equally
confiscated the banner for impermissible promotion of religion during
a school activity.

Under the "bong hits" ruling, school officials gained the court's
backing for making students check at least part of their
constitutional rights at the schoolhouse gate.