Supreme Court agrees to hear a free-speech case known as the "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" dispute
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a free-speech case from Alaska known as the "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" dispute, in which a high school principal suspended a student for displaying that phrase on a banner. The Court accepted the appeal in Morse v. Frederick (Docket No. 06-278) after considering it at five separate private conferences since October, a somewhat unusual pattern of internal debate over a particular case. The case drew national interest after former Whitewater prosecutor Kenneth Starr took it in August. The controversy erupted in 2002 after Joseph Frederick, then a senior at Alaska's Juneau Douglas High School, displayed a banner proclaiming "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" while standing on a sidewalk across the street from the school as the Winter Olympics torch was passing through Juneau. Then-Principal Deborah Morse confiscated the banner and suspended Joseph for 10 days. The event took place during school hours, but the school had let students out of class to watch. The school district argued the student was promoting marijuana use. Joseph said he wrote the nonsensical phrase because he thought it was funny and would get him on television.
In March, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled unanimously for Joseph. U.S. Circuit Judge Andrew J. Kleinfeld said the case fell squarely under the Supreme Court’s 1969 decision in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, which upheld students’ right to wear black armbands to protest the Vietnam War as long as school was not substantially disrupted. The judge distinguished the case from Bethel School District No. 403 v. Fraser, a 1986 Supreme Court decision that backed school officials’ authority to punish a student’s speech at a school assembly that was laced with sexual innuendo, because the speech, in the Supreme Court’s words, "would undermine the school’s basic educational mission." The appeals court stated that "public schools are instrumentalities of government, and government is not entitled to suppress speech that undermines whatever missions it defines for itself." The school district says the issue is whether students should be allowed to promote illegal drug use in an educational setting. Doug Mertz, the student's attorney, says the appeals court ruling validated students' free-speech rights. "A student has the right to peacefully and respectfully state an opinion different from that of the school officials," he says. "We welcome the opportunity to have the Supreme Court review it." The National School Boards Association also filed a brief urging the Supreme Court to accept the case. The case "presents this court with a critical opportunity to review the scope of student free speech rights in the nation’s public schools, which it has not done in 20 years," says the NSBA brief, which was joined by the American Association of School Administrators. The Supreme Court ordered an expedited briefing schedule for the case, and indicated it will be argued in late February.
Chicago Tribune
By Richard Clough
[Full story]
Education Week
By Andrew Trotter
[Full story]
[Editor’s Note: The NSBA/AASA brief and background information on the case, including a link to a summary of the Ninth Circuit’s opinion, are below. Additional information on the case, including the question of whether the principal should be personally liable for a misstep in this uncertain territory, is included in the discussion of another recent case, at the third link below.]
[NSBA brief in Morse v. Frederick]
[NSBA School Law pages on Morse v. Frederick]
[NSBA School Law pages on Guiles v. Marineau]