'BONG' BANNER CASE COULD SEND STUDENT FREE SPEECH UP IN SMOKE

It has been billed as the most important student free speech case
since Vietnam. The justices of the US supreme court gather today to
decide whether a school was wrong to punish a student for displaying a
banner reading "Bong hits for Jesus".

Five years ago Joseph Frederick, then an 18-year-old student at Juneau
high school in Alaska, spelled out the phrase in gaffer tape on a
four-metre banner. His aim, he said, was to get on TV as the Olympic
torch for the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics passed through town
- - and to annoy his head teacher.

School officials led by head Deborah Morse suspended Frederick for 10
days and confiscated the banner. Five years on, Morse vs Frederick
pits those supporting the student, led by the American Civil Liberties
Union, against the school district and Kenneth Starr, the former
special prosecutor of President Clinton, who is being backed by the
Bush administration.

The court is being asked to consider whether a 1969 ruling about
students wearing black armbands in protest at the Vietnam war still
applies in the light of more recent decisions recognising the rights
of schools to enforce rules. The 60s ruling said students "do not shed
their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the
schoolhouse gate".

The school board argues that Frederick was encouraging the smoking of
marijuana. A brief written by Mr Starr argues that a decision in the
student's favour would make it more difficult for school authorities
to "attend holistically to the needs of millions of students".

Frederick, meanwhile, said it was all "absurdly funny ... I wasn't
trying to say anything about drugs, I was just trying to say
something. I wanted to use my right to free speech, and I did it."