PRANKSTER AT SCHOOLHOUSE GATE

Every group in power has its fervent rationale for believing it has a
right, even a duty, to suppress speech it doesn't like. That's why
America has a Supreme Court -- to slap some sense into the censorious.

This week, lawyers argued a case that should have been settled years
ago. It began in January 2002. As an Alaska high school released
students so they could attend a "Winter Olympics Torch Relay,"
then-18-year-old senior Joseph Frederick unfurled a banner that read,
"Bong Hits 4 Jesus," from a Juneau sidewalk. Mr. Frederick thought the
nonsensical message would get him on TV.

And it did -- his name was broadcast across America last
night.

Thank his high school principal, Deborah Morse, who saw the banner,
crossed the street and tore it up. She also suspended Mr. Frederick
for 10 days. Mr. Frederick appealed to the school board and lost. He
went to court, where a federal judge ruled against him. But in 2006,
the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 3-0 for Mr. Frederick. Now
the case is before the Big Bench.

Leaders of the religious right, who want to protect the free speech
rights of religious students, have joined with drug-war dissidents,
like the group Students for Sensible Drug Policy, whose members
protested outside the Supreme Court building. Eric Sterling, an SSDP
board member, told me this is not the first time he has been involved
in "strange bedfellow" coalitions in which one group sees "the
infringement of the civil liberties" of a group as likely to affect
all.

On the school board's side stand the Bush administration and former
special prosecutor Ken Starr, who has come up with a scary argument in
support of Mr. Frederick's suspension. Mr. Starr told the justices
that schools should be able to silence students if their speech
disrupts "the educational mission of the school." Follow the logic.
Juneau schools tell kids to stay away from drugs. If students argue --
or even joke -- they are being, in Mr. Starr's words,
"disruptive."

The 9th Circuit understood how this precedent could be used to punish
free-thinking teens. Judge Andrew Kleinfeld wrote, "All sorts of
missions are undermined by legitimate and protected speech -- a
school's anti-gun mission would be undermined by a student passing
around copies of John R. Lott's book, 'More Guns, Less Crime'; a
school's anti-alcohol mission would be undermined by a student
e-mailing links to a medical study showing less heart disease among
moderate drinkers than teetotalers."

Mr. Sterling predicted the Supremes will "both uphold and reverse" the
9th Circuit ruling, by agreeing that the suspension violated Mr.
Frederick's rights but reversing the finding that Miss Morse could be
held personally liable for damages.

The Big Bench must not walk away from a 1969 ruling that upheld
students' rights to wear black armbands to protest the Vietnam War,
noting, "It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed
their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the
schoolhouse gate."

David Crosby, a lawyer who represented Juneau schools early on,
complained to the Anchorage Daily News that the "carefully manipulated
image of Joe Frederick as a latter-day Thoreau" is "offensive and ludicrous."

Mr. Crosby has a point. Joseph Frederick won't even admit that "Bong
Hits 4 Jesus" was a pro-marijuana message. Also, as the Anchorage
Daily News reported, Mr. Frederick pleaded guilty to misdemeanor sale
of marijuana in 2004. But if anyone has made Mr. Frederick into a
civil-disobedience hero, it is Miss Morse, who went overboard
punishing a smart-aleck kid.

At first, she suspended Mr. Frederick for five days. Then, she upped
it to 10 days -- she says, because he would not name his accomplices.
He says she did so because he quoted Thomas Jefferson on free speech.

She could have tried to reason with the kid. Or she could have used
adults' most potent weapon -- ignoring him. Instead, Miss Morse gave
the smart mouth the grounds to turn a prank into a federal case.