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Sequoia Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Oct-10-07 12:27 PM
Original message
Tenn. School Fight Over Jena 6 T-Shirt
Edited on Wed Oct-10-07 12:27 PM by Sequoia
NASHVILLE, Tenn. - A student is suing her suburban Nashville school district for the right to wear a T-shirt with the words “Free the Jena Six,” a reference to the black students in a Louisiana town accused of beating a white classmate.

According to a lawsuit filed in federal court in Nashville last week, Danielle Super came in to school late on Sept. 20 after having attended a march.

As she was waiting for her mother to sign her in, Smyrna High School assistant principal Jolene Watson told her she could not come into the school wearing the Jena Six T-shirt because it could “cause a problem.”

After protesting the order, Super changed shirts and returned to school, the complaint states.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/10/10/4457/
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pingzing58 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Oct-10-07 12:42 PM
Response to Original message
1. The SCOTUS has already determined that High School students do not have free speach rights. nt
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no_hypocrisy Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Oct-10-07 01:04 PM
Response to Reply #1
2. Arkansas federal court said black armbands were free speech
http://www.splc.org/newsflash.asp?id=1608&year=

and New Jersey federal court recently ruled middleschool kids could wear buttons with Hitler Youth pictures on them in order to protest compelled uniforms.
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Tesha Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Oct-10-07 01:09 PM
Response to Reply #1
3. Citation? (NT)
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pingzing58 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Oct-10-07 01:34 PM
Response to Reply #3
5. I was referring to this decision.

<http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1174307781411>

"Five years later, Frederick's suit against the principal has evolved into a potential landmark reassessment of Tinker v. Des Moines, the 1969 high court decision that declared the right of students to freedom of expression in schools, so long as it is not disruptive and does not invade the rights of others.

On Monday, former solicitor general Kenneth Starr and deputy solicitor general Edwin Kneedler, arguing on behalf of Morse, seemed to win over Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. with the argument that school officials should be given deference when restricting student speech to advance a school's educational mission -- especially, though not exclusively, when that mission is fighting illegal drugs.

"Can't the school decide that it's part of its mission to try to prevent its students from engaging in drug use?" Roberts asked incredulously.

But Justice Samuel Alito Jr. described that as a "very, very disturbing argument," because granting such deference would give school officials a broad charter to punish student speech by simply declaring it contrary to their ever-expanding educational mission.

"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," Alito said."

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Tesha Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Oct-10-07 04:38 PM
Response to Reply #5
8. It's not clear that the "Bong Hits for Jesus" case bears on the wearing of political tee shirts.
> "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," Alito said."

No matter what Alito said, it's not clear that the "Bong
Hits for Jesus" case bears on the wearing of political tee
shirts. While he may be a Constitution-shredder, political
speech has always been highly protected and it's not at
all clear that he can get four other Justices to join
him in a hypothetical case.

Tesha
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KamaAina Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Oct-10-07 01:10 PM
Response to Original message
4. She should have just taken the shirt off, flung it aside,
and proceeded to class. :-)
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RB TexLa Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Oct-10-07 01:55 PM
Response to Original message
6. As long as students aren't bringing guns to school and blowing people away

I can't see why they care what they have on their shirts.
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flashl Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Oct-10-07 02:14 PM
Response to Original message
7. What's the diff regarding Jena 6 t-shirts? Court Allows Protest Via Buttons
If you haven’t heard enough about free speech in schools yet, here’s one more recent story to put you over the top, or at least thoroughly complicate your understanding of the First Amendment.

Protesting a new school uniform policy, two fifth-grade students in New Jersey made buttons featuring “identically dressed members of Hitler Youth with the words ”No School Uniforms” imposed over them.” The buttons sparked a controversy; the situation landed in a district court; earlier in September a judge found in favor of the students, of course likening the case to Tinker v. Des Moines in 1969 when the Supreme Court established that students didn’t have to leave their rights “at the schoolhouse gate.” The story is pretty typical of many student free speech cases.
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