SUPREME COURT HEARS STUDENT SPEECH CASE

WASHINGTON -- A high school senior's 14-foot banner proclaiming "Bong
Hits 4 Jesus" gave the Supreme Court a provocative prop for a lively
argument yesterday about the extent of schools' control over student
speech.

If the justices conclude that Joseph Frederick's homemade sign was a
pro-drug message, they are likely to side with principal Deborah
Morse. She suspended Frederick in 2002 when he unfurled the banner
across the street from the school in Juneau, Alaska.

"I thought we wanted our schools to teach something, including
something besides just basic elements, including the character
formation and not to use drugs," Chief Justice Roberts said yesterday.

But the court could rule for Frederick if it determines that he was,
as he has contended, conducting a free-speech experiment using a
nonsensical message that contained no pitch for drug use.

"It sounds like just a kid's provocative statement to me," Justice
David Souter said.

Students in public schools don't have the same rights as adults, but
neither do they leave their constitutional protections at the
schoolhouse gate, as the court said in a landmark speech-rights ruling
from the Vietnam War era.

Morse, now a Juneau schools' administrator, was at the court
yesterday. Frederick, teaching and studying in China, was not.

Former independent counsel Kenneth Starr, whose Kirkland and Ellis law
firm is representing Morse for free, argued that the justices should
defer to the judgment of the principal. Morse reasonably interpreted
the banner as a pro-drug message, despite what Frederick intended,
Starr said.

School officials are perfectly within their rights to curtail student
speech that advocates drug use, he said. "The message here is, in
fact, critical," Starr said.

Starr, joined by the Bush administration, also asked the court to
adopt a broad rule that could essentially give public schools the
right to clamp down on any speech with which they disagree. That
argument did not appear to have widespread support among the justices.

Douglas Mertz of Juneau, Frederick's lawyer, struggled to keep the
focus away from drugs. "This is a case about free speech. It is not a
case about drugs," Mertz said.

Conservative groups that often are allied with the administration are
backing Frederick out of concern that a ruling for Morse would let
schools clamp down on religious expression, including speech that
might oppose homosexuality or abortion. The outcome also could stray
from the conservative-liberal split that often characterizes
controversial cases.

Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote several opinions in favor of student
speech rights while a federal appeals court judge, seemed more
concerned by the administration's broad argument in favor of schools
than did his fellow conservatives.

"I find that a very, a very disturbing argument," Alito told Justice
Department lawyer Edwin Kneedler, "because schools have . . . defined
their educational mission so broadly that they can suppress all sorts
of political speech and speech expressing fundamental values of the
students, under the banner of getting rid of speech that's
inconsistent with educational missions."

Justice Stephen Breyer, in the court's liberal wing, said he was
troubled a ruling in favor of Frederick, even if he was making a joke,
would make it harder for principals to run their schools.

"We'll suddenly see people testing limits all over the place in the
high schools," Breyer said.

On the other hand, he said, a decision favorable to the schools "may
really limit people's rights on free speech. That's what I'm
struggling with."

After the arguments, two dozen sign-carrying demonstrators chanted,
"Teachers should teach, not limit free speech."

Scores of students waited outside the court early yesterday for an
opportunity to listen to the arguments. Ninth - graders on a class
trip from Mosinee, Wis., were in general agreement on the issue. Cari
Kemp, 15, said Frederick's protest was "just a joke" but that "the
school took it too far."