School Efforts to Stem Violence Offer A Textbook Case of Limits on Speech

ARE SCHOOLS GOING TO FAR?? WHY OR WHY NOT? WHAT IS THE NAME OF THE CASE THAT SET THE PRECEDENT?


By DAN SLATER

With the nation's school systems roiled by campus shootings over the past decade, and on the lookout for conflict, students are being asked to check a broader array of free-speech rights at the door -- raising questions about what lesson that is teaching them.

Controversial T-shirts like this one increasingly are being banned by schools wary of violence, often with the backing of the court

Public-school administrators are hewing to a zero-tolerance policy on expression they believe incites violence, and they are doing so with the backing of the courts. Controversial clothing has been a common casualty. Struggling with racial tensions at his high school, a principal in Maryville, Tenn., banned depictions of the Confederate flag in 2005 and was supported by a federal court. Last month, the Aurora Frontier K-8 School in Aurora, Colo., suspended an 11-year-old who refused to remove a homemade T-shirt that read, "Obama is a terrorist's best friend." The shirt caused "a very loud argument on the playground," according to a statement from the school.

Since such actions stem from a concern over the safety of adolescents, even free-speech advocates acknowledge a need for some degree of deference to educators. But an argument of imminent danger is hard to make in many of these cases. Some think educators may be inadvertently teaching children that suppressing speech is the ready solution to ideological conflict.

The Supreme Court's history in addressing free speech in schools goes back at least to the Vietnam War era. In 1969, the court struck down a move by schools in Des Moines, Iowa, to ban black armbands worn to protest the war, concluding there was no reason to believe the armbands would cause "substantial disruption." Since then, the court has largely sided with schools in a variety of bans on expression.

"As long as courts hear the word 'disruption,' they'll almost always side with administrators," says Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

It isn't clear that censorship of controversial clothing diminishes violence in schools. Serious violent crime in schools decreased 62% between 1994 and 2005, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. That could mean school efforts to crack down on violence, including dress codes, are working. But critics of such bans say that very decline in violence suggests that administrators are overreacting.

Dewey Cornell, who oversees the Youth Violence Project at the University of Virginia, says dress codes don't curtail school violence as much as an overall structured environment does.

Late last month, a federal judge in Pennsylvania sided with a school district in its decision to bar a student from wearing a T-shirt imprinted with images of guns and phrases such as "Volunteer Homeland Security" and "Terrorist Hunting Permit...No Bag Limit."

The teen and his parents said the T-shirt, a gift from an uncle serving in Iraq, was worn in support of the troops. The judge, in rejecting the suggestion of a First Amendment violation, wrote: "Students have no constitutional right to promote violence in our public schools." He noted that, following massacres at Columbine High School and Virginia Tech, among others, schools have had to be more vigilant.

In the Tennessee case, the Confederate flag had long been established as a "battle call," according to Steve Lafon, the principal. Mr. Lafon says that before he arrived, the school had "a lot of tolerance-type programs," but that problems such as racist graffiti and a fight between a black student and a white student at a basketball game "set the stage." At that point, he says, banning the symbol was the only option. Mr. Lafon says he would now consider banning any item that could be "racially divisive," including a Malcolm X shirt.

Dr. Cornell says: "The argument that 'I tried [education] and it didn't work' is not a convincing one. No program, treatment or method works in all cases."

The Pennsylvania case suggests that perceptions of school violence may be leading courts to defer to school administrators. The school district made no showing that the student had evinced violent tendencies or even that violence was a problem at the school, though the court noted that a female student had told a teacher that the shirt made her uncomfortable. The court determined that the shirt lacked a "constitutionally protected political message."

"Throughout American history, there's been a willingness to give up freedom for security," says Leonard Brown, the lawyer who represented the student in the case. "We need to recognize that we're losing something, even though no court likes to say that."