Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District
Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District | |
---|---|
Subsequent | None on record |
Holding | |
The First Amendment, as applied through the Fourteenth, did not permit a public school to punish a student for wearing a black armband as an anti-war protest, absent any evidence that the rule was necessary to avoid substantial interference with school discipline or the rights of others. | |
Court membership | |
| |
Case opinions | |
Majority | Fortas, joined by Warren, Douglas, Brennan, White, Marshall |
Concurrence | Stewart |
Concurrence | White |
Dissent | Black |
Dissent | Harlan |
Laws applied | |
U.S. Const. amends. I, XIV; 42 U.S.C. § 1983 |
Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, 393 U.S. 503 (1969), was a
Background
In 1965, five students in
The Tinker family had been involved in civil rights activism before the student protest. The Tinker children's mother, Lorena, was a leader of the Peace Organization in Des Moines.
Legal precedents and issues
Previous decisions, such as West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, had established that students did have some constitutional protections in public school. This case was the first time that the court set forth standards for safeguarding public school students' free speech rights. This case involved symbolic speech, which was first recognized in Stromberg v. California.[5]
Lower courts
A suit was filed after the Iowa Civil Liberties Union approached the Tinker family, and the ACLU agreed to help with the lawsuit. Dan Johnston was the lead attorney on the case.[3]
The Des Moines Independent Community School District represented the school officials who suspended the students. The children's fathers filed suit in the U.S. District Court, which upheld the decision of the Des Moines school board.
A tie vote in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit meant that the U.S. District Court's decision continued to stand, which forced the Tinkers and Eckhardts to appeal to the Supreme Court directly.
The only students involved in the lawsuit were Mary Beth Tinker, John Tinker, and Christopher Eckhardt.[3] During the case, the Tinker family received hate mail, death threats, and other hateful messages.[3]
The case was argued before the court on November 12, 1968. It was funded by the Des Moines residents Louise Noun, who was the president of the Iowa Civil Liberties Union, and her brother, Joseph Rosenfield, a businessman.[6]
Decision
Majority opinion
The court's 7–2 decision held that the First Amendment applied to public schools, and that administrators would have to demonstrate constitutionally valid reasons for any specific regulation of speech in the classroom. Justice Abe Fortas wrote the majority opinion, holding that the speech regulation at issue in Tinker was "based upon an urgent wish to avoid the controversy which might result from the expression, even by the silent symbol of armbands, of opposition to this Nation's part in the conflagration in Vietnam." This decision made students and adults equal in terms of First Amendment rights while at school. Bethel School District v. Fraser and Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier later rewrote this implication, limiting the freedoms granted to students.[7]
The Court held that for school officials to justify censoring speech, they "must be able to show that [their] action was caused by something more than a mere desire to avoid the discomfort and unpleasantness that always accompany an unpopular viewpoint," that the conduct that would "materially and substantially interfere with the requirements of appropriate discipline in the operation of the school."[8] The Court found that the actions of the Tinkers in wearing armbands did not cause disruption and held that their activity represented constitutionally protected symbolic speech. The Court ruled that First Amendment rights were not absolute, and could be withheld if there was a “carefully restricted circumstance.” Student speech that has the potential to cause disruption is not protected by Tinker.[9]
Dissents
Justices
Harlan dissented on the grounds that he "[found] nothing in this record which impugns the good faith of respondents in promulgating the armband regulation."[11]
Legacy
Subsequent jurisprudence
Tinker remains a viable and frequently cited court precedent, and court decisions citing Tinker have both protected and limited the scope of student free speech rights. Tinker was cited in the 1973 court case Papish v. Board of Curators of the University of Missouri, which ruled that the expulsion of a student for distributing a newspaper on campus containing what the school deemed to be "indecent speech" violated the First Amendment. In the 1986 court case Bethel School District v. Fraser, the Supreme Court ruled that a high school student's sexual innuendo-laden speech during a school assembly was not constitutionally protected. The court said the protection of student political speech created in the Tinker case did not extend to vulgar language in a school setting. The court ruled that similar language may be constitutionally protected if used by adults to make a political point, but that those protections did not apply to students in a public school.
The Court's rulings in Fraser and Hazelwood state that a “substantial disruption” or infringing on the rights of other students was reason enough to restrict student freedom of speech or expression. Some experts argue that the three individual cases each act independently of one another and govern different types of student speech.[7] It is argued that Fraser does not interfere with Tinker, since Fraser questions sexual speech while Tinker protects political speech.[9] While some believe that Tinker's protections were overturned by Fraser and Kuhlmeier, others believe that the latter cases created exceptions to the Tinker ruling.[7] Others argue that a broad reading of Tinker allows for viewpoint discrimination on certain topics of student speech.[12]
In 2013, the
Several cases have arisen from the
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit applied Tinker in February 2014 to rule that a California school did not violate the First Amendment in Dariano v. Morgan Hill Unified School District, where a school banned American flag apparel during a Cinco de Mayo celebration. The school said they had enacted the ban due to a conflict caused by American flag apparel that had occurred at the event the previous year.[20] The Ninth Circuit declined to re-hear the case en banc and the U.S. Supreme Court later declined to review the case.[21]
A Pennsylvania high school cheerleader, who had been reprimanded by her school for using offensive language in a social media post that she made off-campus and outside school hours, filed suit against the school in 2017 claiming her First Amendment rights had been infringed. The district court ruled in her favor, and the school district appealed to the Third Circuit. There, the three-judge panel upheld the district ruling unanimously, but the majority stated that Tinker could never apply to off-campus speech made by a student, while Judge Thomas L. Ambro believed this was too broad a claim. The school petitioned to the Supreme Court, which ruled in June 2021 in Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L. to uphold the ruling in favor of the student, but overturning the decision of the Third Circuit in that Tinker may cover some parts of off-campus speech when the school has a compelling interest, such as for incidents of harassments or threats. However, the Supreme Court did not attempt to define when such off-campus speech fell under a school's compelling interest.[22]
Tinker Tour
Mary Beth Tinker decided to embark on a tour around the United States, called the Tinker Tour, beginning in 2013 to "bring real-life civics lessons to students through the Tinker armband story and the stories of other young people."[23] The tour is a project of the Student Press Law Center.
See also
- List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 393
- Schenck v. United States, 249 U.S. 47 (1919)
- Shanley v. Northeast Independent School District (1972)
- Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15 (1973)
- Broussard v. School Board of Norfolk (1992)
- Gillman v. Holmes County School District (2008)
References
- ^ Tinker v. Des Moines Indep. Cmty. Sch. Dist., 393 U.S. 503, 506 (1969).
- ^ "Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (1969)". The Free Speech Center. Retrieved December 18, 2023.
- ^ S2CID 142986327.
- ^ ISSN 0003-4827.
- ^ Eastland, Terry (2000). Freedom of Expression in the Supreme Court The Defining Cases. United States of America: Rowman & Littlefield publishers. p. 185..
- ISSN 0029-4624.
- ^ ISSN 1556-5068.
- ^ Tinker, 393 U.S. at 509.
- ^ JSTOR 1073876.
- ^ Tinker, 393 U.S. at 517–18.
- ^ Tinker, 393 U.S. at 526.
- from the original on June 16, 2021. Retrieved June 29, 2022.
- ^ "Entire U.S. appeals court to hear Easton 'Boobies' case". tribunedigital-mcall. Archived from the original on December 3, 2018. Retrieved November 30, 2018.
- ^ a b "Update: How the "Boobies" case almost made it to the Supreme Court - National Constitution Center". National Constitution Center – constitutioncenter.org. Archived from the original on December 3, 2018. Retrieved November 26, 2018.
- ^ "Supreme Court declines to hear 'boobies' bracelet case". USA TODAY. Archived from the original on December 3, 2018. Retrieved November 26, 2018.
- ^ a b Volokh, Eugene (September 21, 2015). "The Confederate flag, the First Amendment and public schools". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on December 10, 2018. Retrieved November 26, 2018.
- ^ "Hardwick v. Heyward, 2013 U.S. App. LEXIS 5855 (4th Cir. March 25, 2013)". educationlaw.org. Archived from the original on December 3, 2018. Retrieved November 28, 2018.
- ^ United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit . Castorina v. Madison County School Board. 8 March 2001 http://www.ahcuah.com/lawsuit/federal/castor.htm Archived 2018-11-23 at the Wayback Machine.
- ^ United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Defoe v. Spiva. 18 Nov. 2010. http://www.opn.ca6.uscourts.gov/opinions.pdf/10a0358p-06.pdf
- ^ LoMonte, Frank (January 26, 2015). "Protect students' right to display the American flag despite "hecklers," free-speech icons urge Supreme Court". Student Press Law Center. Archived from the original on December 3, 2018. Retrieved December 3, 2018.
- ^ "Dariano v. Morgan Hill Unified School District". American Freedom Law Center. Archived from the original on December 3, 2018. Retrieved November 28, 2018.
- ^ Liptak, Adam (June 23, 2021). "Supreme Court Rules for Cheerleader Punished for Vulgar Snapchat Message". The New York Times. Archived from the original on June 23, 2021. Retrieved June 23, 2021.
- ^ "About the Tinker Tour". Tinker Tour. February 14, 2013. Archived from the original on December 3, 2018. Retrieved November 26, 2018.
External links
- Works related to Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District at Wikisource
- Text of Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District , 393 U.S. 503 (1969) is available from: CourtListener Findlaw Google Scholar Justia Library of Congress OpenJurist Oyez (oral argument audio)
- First Amendment Library entry on Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District
- Schema-root.org: Tinker v. Des Moines John Tinker's page about Tinker v. Des Moines. Contains a current news feed.
- Background summary and questions about the case
- Tinker v. Des Moines from C-SPAN's Landmark Cases: Historic Supreme Court Decisions