One more for the road
First, thanks to all of you who have posted such interesting, informative and intelligent comments the past two weeks. You always make my time here enjoyable and educational. Still, I’m glad Bookworm is back and ready to bring you her wide diversity of posts, and her thoughtfullness and intelligence that make the Bookwormroom such a great place to hang out.
Still, I’d like to talk about one more topic. Last year about this time, the Supreme Court, in Morse v. Frederick, 127 S.Ct. 2618 (2007), held that a student could be disciplined for unfurling a banner saying “BONG HiTS 4 JESUS” at a school event (specifically, while standing at the side of a street waiting for the Olympic torch to go by). As a libertarian/conservative, I’m distressed that the conservative members of the Court were so willing to restrict speech.
The Court used to apply a “substantial disruption” test, but this Court rejected that test. I suppose it had to, because the most disruption this banner could have caused was that some students might have been distracted and missed seeing the torch go by — hardly a great loss to their education.
The Court correctly notes that students do no have the same rights as other citizens, because of the “special characteristics of the environment,” whatever that means. Though it could have been clearer on the point, the Court appeared to make a distinction between advocating illegal drug use (which it viewed this banner as doing) and advocating changes to legalize drug use. This strikes me as an unworkable test that breaks down completely when considering advocacy of civil disobedience. Obviously, in this case, advocacy of drug use at least implicitly advocates making drug use legal.
In any case, the notion that a school should be permitted to suppress advocacy of drug use on campus is most unfortunate. Are teachers to become hall monitors, listening in on student conversations, suspending anyone they hear suggesting drug use is a good thing? I would go back to the substantial disruption test. Unless the student’s speech threatens to disrupt the educational process, it must be permitted. Granted, drug use is a bad thing. Granted, as the Court goes on at length about, we’ve decided it is a part of the schools’ mission to discourage drug use (Lord knows why this is a part of the schools’ mission, but that’s another subject). That just turns this rather silly banner into dissenting political speech, in that it dissents from the message the school is tasked with preaching to the students.
The First Amendment matters. Speech must be protected, even in our schools. Dissenting speech must be especially protected. Where, as here, that speech clearly does not threaten to disrupt the education of the listeners, and is not lewd or offensive, it must be protected absolutely.
We conservatives should keep in mind that the vast majority of the schools in this country are controlled and run by liberals. Do we really want to give them authority to suppress dissenting speech, and to teach our children that suppressing speech (in the name of political correctness, for example) is okay? Yet, it’s the conservative members of the Court, led by Justice Roberts, the author of the the opinion, who have struck this blow against free speech in the school setting. I think that’s unfortunate. What do you think?
