The U.S. Supreme Court first acknowledged that students have the right of free speech in 1965. The case centered on the right to protest a war in a public school setting.
THE CASE: Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (1965)
WHO: Mary Beth Tinker, a 13-year-old, junior high school student in Des Moines, Iowa, her brother, John Tinker, 15, both Quakers, and Christopher Eckhardt, 16.
THE ISSUE: Students wore black armbands to school to protest the U.S. war in Vietnam. School officials ordered them to remove the armbands. The students refused, and were suspended.
WHAT HAPPENED: The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the suspensions, ruling that the armbands did not disrupt school functioning, were “symbolic speech,” and therefore, the wearing of armbands was protected under the First Amendment.
SIGNIFICANCE FOR ALL STUDENTS: The majority court opinion said, “Schools may not be enclaves of totalitarianism.
Students and teachers do not shed their constitutional rights to free speech at the schoolhouse gates.”
For more information about the case, check out these
websites, or just google “Tinker v. Des Moines”:
http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org
http://www.landmarkcases.org
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