ALABAMA

Religion in Schools (US Supreme Court) - Wallace v. Jaffre (1985)
After the US Supreme Court had ruled that prayers in schools were unconstitutional, the Alabama legislature tried to get around that ruling by passing a law authorizing teachers to start each school day with a "moment of silent meditation or voluntary prayer."  But in the 1985 case of Wallace v. Jaffree, the Court ruled this law was unconstitutional.  "Silent meditation" was really about religion, the Court said, and since the law lacked a secular purpose, it violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

1. Listen to the oral arguments: http://www.oyez.org/oyez/resource/case/428/abstract

2. Read the decision: http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=472&invol=38

Searches
The US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit ruled in 1997 that teachers who strip-searched two eight-year-old second grade girls in Talladega cannot be sued because they were acting in good faith.  The girls were accused of stealing $7.  The money was never found, and it was never clearly established if it had in fact been taken, or misplaced.  The girls' lawyers had argued that since 1980, strip searches had been found unconstitutional in every case in which neither weapons nor drugs were involved. 

Dissenting judges on the Appeals Court were concerned by the multiple searches to which the two children were subjected: first their backpacks were searched, and then they had to take off their socks and shoes.  When nothing was found, they were escorted to the bathroom – not once, but twice! – and ordered to lower their underwear.

In his dissent, Senior Circuit Judge Kravitch wrote, "The second strip search was even more blatantly unconstitutional, as no one could reasonably argue that it was necessary after the fruitless prior search...Strip searching a student is permissible only in extraordinary cases, and only to prevent imminent harm." The US Supreme Court refused to review the case. 

(The US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit Court has jurisdiction in Florida and Georgia, as well as Alabama.)

ALASKA

Freedom of Expression (US Supreme Court) - Morse v. Frederick (2007)
In 2002, Joseph Frederick, a high school senior, stood on a sidewalk opposite his Juneau-Douglas  High School  holding up a 14-foot long banner stating "Bong Hits 4 Jesus."  At the time television cameras were filming runners who were carrying the Olympic torch past  Frederick as part of a celebration of the Winter Olympic games.  The school's principal, angered by what she regarded as Frederick's pro-drugs message, took away his banner and later suspended him 10 days.

Frederick claimed his First Amendment rights had been violated and the ACLU brought a case in federal district court.  The court dismissed his lawsuit and Frederick appealed the rulings.  A three-court panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled in March 2006 sided with Frederick.  Judge Andrew Kleinfeld said his speech was not "vulgar, lewd, and obscene" and did not cause any disruption.  It was therefore protected under the Tinker standard.  Eventually the case was heard by the US Supreme Court.

 On June 25, 2007 the US Supreme Court ruled by 5-4 in favor of the school principal.  In his majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts stated: "We hold that schools may take steps to safeguard those entrusted to their care from speech that can reasonably be regarded as encouraging illegal drug use."  In his strongly worded dissent, Justice Stevens declared "that the school's interest in protecting its students from exposure to speech 'reasonably regarded as promoting illegal drug use' cannot justify disciplining Frederick for his attempt to make an ambiguous statement to a television audience simply because it contained an oblique reference to drugs.  The First Amendment demands more, indeed, much more."  In an concurrent opinion, Clarence Thomas sided with the majority, but wished the Court had gone further and thrown out Tinker entirely: "In my view, the history of public education, as originally understood, does not protect student speech in public schools...in the earliest public schools, teachers taught, and students listened.  Teachers commanded, and students obeyed."

ARIZONA

Search and Seizure
In 2005 a federal immigration judge threw out deportation charges against four undocumented Phoenix high school students on grounds that they had been subjected to racial profiling and an illegal search and seizure at the Canadian border.  They were among a group of nine high-achieving Latino students who had traveled to New York as part of a school field trip to participate in a prestigious international solar-powered boat competition.  When a teacher enquired whether they could cross to the Canadian side of Niagara Falls using their high school identification cards, the students were singled out and interrogated for nine hours about their legal status by US immigration officials.  

ARKANSAS

Searches
The US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit ruled in 2004 against a search conducted by the Little Rock School District .  All students in a secondary school classroom had to leave the room after piling their belongings on their desks.  School staff then searched the belongings, including the purse of a female student, J.D., that contained marijuana.  After the school turned the marijuana over to the police, J.D. was convicted of a misdemeanor. 

J.D. challenged the search policy.  A district court upheld the search even though it was conducted without "individualized suspicion" of wrongdoing as the Supreme Court had required in the 1985 T.L.O. case.  But the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit disagreed. It ruled that by conducting a random suspicionless search, the school had unreasonably invaded students' legitimate expectations of privacy (which, though limited, do exist), and therefore violated their Fourth Amendment rights. 

(The US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit has jurisdiction over Iowa , Minnesota , Missouri , Nebraska , North Dakota , South Dakota as well as Arkansas . ) 

CALIFORNIA

Religion (US SUPREME COURT)
Elk Grove v. Newdow (2004)

The US Supreme Court chose Flag Day, June 14, 2004, to issue a ruling in the controversial case Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow.  This case had challenged the use of the words  "under God" in the Pledge of  Allegiance as a violation of the First Amendment's Establishment Clause.  The words had been added to the Pledge by federal statute on Flag Day, June 14, 1954 to distinguish the US from its Cold War enemy, the Soviet Union , which rejected all organized religion. 

The case was brought by a professed atheist, Michael Newdow, who said his nine-year-old daughter's religious liberty was violated because she had to hear the Pledge in class, even though she did not have to participate in it.  A district court ruled against Mr. Newdow, but then the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit agreed that the words "under God" in the Pledge and the school's policy of requiring the Pledge on a daily basis both failed the Lemon test – the standard established by the Supreme Court for deciding when a practice violated the Establishment Clause.

There was an immediate outcry against this ruling in both the US Congress and across the country.  Then the legal picture got more complicated.  The mother of Newdow's daughter – who had custody of the child – publicly stated that she disapproved of the lawsuit.  She said that as a born-again Christian, she did not mind the girl being exposed to the Pledge in school. 

The Supreme Court had to decide two things: whether the Pledge in schools violated the Establishment Clause because it contained the words  "under God," and whether Michael Newdow as a non-custodial parent had legal "standing" – an identifiable interest that gave him the right to speak for his daughter before a federal court.  The court ducked the Establishment Clause issue, so we still don't know whether the words "under God" violate the Constitution.  On the matter of Newdow's right to bring the case, it ruled that because of family law principles, Newdow did not have standing to bring the suit in federal court.

Listen to the oral arguments: http://www.oyez.org/oyez/resource/case/1682/
Read the decision: http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=000&invol=02-1624

Freedom of Expression (US SUPREME COURT)
In March 2007, the US Supreme Court in Harper v. Poway Unified School District vacated (set aside) the decision of a federal appeals court upholding the action of Poway High School officials who barred a student from wearing a T-shirt to school that called homosexuality "shameful."  The student had sought an injunction against the school's dress code on the ground that his First Amendment rights had been violated.  But the federal district court did not agree.  Then judges on a panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that the school "need not tolerate verbal assaults that may destroy the self-esteem of our most vulnerable teenagers and interfere with their educational development."  However, a dissenting judge on the panel said banning the shirt was an example of "viewpoint discrimination" which was not justifiable, and that the lone message was not so demeaning that it interfered with the ability of homosexual students to get an education.  When the student's appeal to the US Supreme Court was pending, a federal district court ruled that the student's First Amendment claims were moot (without legal significance) because he was no longer in school.  

(The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is the largest of the federal circuit courts.  It has jurisdiction over Alaska , Washington , Oregon , Ohio , Montana , Nevada , Arizona , Hawaii , Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands as well as California . )

Freedom of Expression
The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in the early 1990s ruled in favor of students in a California high school who were suspended for wearing buttons to school saying, "I'm not listening scab" and "Do scabs bleed?" during a teachers' strike.  A lower court had said that the buttons were "offensive" and "inherently disruptive."  However, the Circuit Court ruled that they were neither vulgar, lewd nor plainly offensive (within the meaning of the Supreme Court's 1986 Fraser ruling), were not school-sponsored (in the sense of the Supreme Court's Hazelwood ruling), and did not meet the Tinker test of causing substantial school disruption.

Freedom of Expression
On July 2, 2007, a California Superior Court judge prevented the Napa Valley Unified School District from enforcing the strict "Appropriate Attire Policy" in Redwood Middle School.  The policy prohibited any words or patterns of any kind, including stripes and flowers.  Students turned to the ACLU after they were prevented from wearing "Tigger" socks, an American Cancer Society ribbon pin, and a t-shirt declaring "D.A.R.E. to keep kids off drugs."  In its decision, the court ruled that by barring all expressive messages, the dress code policy violates students' First Amendment rights and also California state law, and that parents must be given the opportunity to opt of out participation with the dress code policy.  The judge cited the US Supreme Court decision handed down a week previously, Morse v. Frederick, which upheld the suspension of a student for expression "that it reasonably viewed as promoting drug use."  The judge pointed out that expression promoting drugs was an exception to the broader Tinker principle that had been upheld by the Supreme Court in its Morse v. Frederick ruling: that student expression is protected as long as it does not "materially and substantially disrupt the work and discipline of the school."

Freedom of Expression
Students who belonged to a peace and justice club at Deer Valley High School had planned to hold a peace rally in February 2005, which would include speeches, a singer, leaflets and banners.  The principal felt the anti-war message was disrespectful and refused to allow it to go ahead.  Students then revised their plan for a rally and planned to hold it in March, but then the principal would not allow them to use a sound system.  The day before the event was to take place, he withdrew permission for it altogether and put two of its student organizers on two-day in-campus suspension.   After the ACLU intervened, the school agreed to allow the students to hold a rally in September during the lunch period and to use the school's sound system for music and speeches.  The suspensions were removed from the students' records and the school also agreed to withdraw the policy requiring students to get prior approval for literature they pass out on school campuses.

Freedom of Expression
In June 2006, a senior at Jurupa Valley High School in Mira Loma sued his school district in state court, claiming his free speech rights were violated when he was suspended for distributing flyers about an off-campus rally against illegal immigration.  The student, Joshua Denhalter, said he was also told he couldn't wear a T-shirt with a slogan against illegal immigration in the school.  The school  district responded by saying students do not have the right to free speech when that speech incites other students or disrupts the running of the school. 

Zero Tolerance
The California Supreme Court in 2004 unanimously overturned the felony conviction of a 15-year-old Santa Teresa High School student who served 100 days in a juvenile jail after showing a classmate a "dark" poem he had written.  It contained this passage: "For I can be the next kid to bring guns to kill students at school.  So parents watch your children cuz I'm BACK."  The court ruled that "can" does not mean "will" and that the poem did not constitute a threat.  The court did rule on whether the student's expulsion from the high school was permissible.  He had only attended the school for two weeks before being arrested and expelled for his writing.  Several prominent writers – including Nobel Prize winner J.M. Coetzee and Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Chabon -- weighed in on his behalf. 

Searches ('GANG INVOLVEMENT')
The ACLU of California brought a lawsuit against police and officials of James Logan High School in Union City who, in 2002, rounded up 60 students to question and search without any kind of reasonable suspicion that they had broken a law or school rule.  After being removed targeted during the lunch hour, they were sent to separate classrooms based on their race or ethnicity where they were searched, interrogated and photographed.  The police took the photographs back to the police station.  The suit says they were searched for evidence of possible gang involvement because of their racial or ethnic background or how they dressed and who their friends were.  In 2005 the city and New Haven Unified School District agreed to a settlement which put in place new rules governing interactions between police and students.  The police agreed to destroy the photos and other documents taken during the search, and not to engage in racial or ethnic profiling on or off campus.  School officials agreed that that they would not again detain students for the purpose of searching, photographing or questioning them based on race, appearance, or associations.  They also agreed only to search students and their lockers when they have specific reason to believe the law or a school rule has been broken, and only to involve the police when the safety of people on campus was threatened or when they have reason to believe the law has been broken.

Searches
A vice principal at Rancho Bernardo High School in Los Angeles was reassigned to a teaching position for violating the school district's search and seizure procedure in 2002.  She had lifted the skirts of female students to check what kind of underwear they had on before allowing them to attend a school dance.  Girls who refused to undergo the underwear check were barred from the dance. The search took place in front of male students and teachers. 

Harassment
Washington Preparatory High School in Los Angeles reached a settlement in 2005 with students and the Gay-Straight Alliance Network that had sued to stop harassment on the basis of sexual orientation.  The lawsuit had charged administrators, teachers and security guards with harassing gay and lesbian students and operating "a climate rife with hostility towards and discrimination against students and staff based on their actual or perceived sexual orientation."  The suit also said teachers had threatened to "out" students to their parents.   The settlement mandates staff training and student education on diversity, discrimination and harassment. 

COLORADO

Freedom of Expression
Early in 2007 six students from Loveland High School faced criminal harassment charges for posting a rap song that was seen as threatening on the Internet.  The song featured lyrics such as "My fists are my best friends – you're about to meet them too."  After a prosecutor decided that the lyrics were not directed at anyone, the harassment charges were dropped. 

Equal Access 
In January 2003 seven Palmer High School students in Colorado Springs went to court with the help of the ACLU after they denied permission to start a Gay/Straight Alliance. The school district at first argued that it only recognized student clubs if they were related to the curriculum, but the students demonstrated that this was not in fact the case.  Two years after the lawsuit was filed, the school district agreed to settle it and gave Palmer's Gay-Straight Alliance equality with other clubs on the school's campus. 

Freedom of Expression  - Internet
In 2006, a high school junior was suspended for five days after posting condescending remarks about his Littleton school on MySpace.com.  The student was suspended when the comments came to the attention of the school principal.  When he took steps to challenge his suspension in court with the help of the ACLU, he was quickly reinstated and his record was erased.

Freedom of Expression – Pledge of Allegiance
In 2003 the Colorado legislature passed a statute which required that all students and teachers in every public school recite the Pledge of Allegiance at the beginning of every school day. They could be excused if they had religious issues with the Pledge, or if a parent put their objections in writing.  When a suit was brought alleging that the statute violated First Amendment Rights, the judge barred its enforcement. By 2004 the state legislature had amended the statute and made the Pledge voluntary, not mandatory.

CONNECTICUT

Discrimination
In 1996 the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled in Sheff v. O'Neill that the state must act against racial imbalance in its schools, no matter what the cause. The ruling in Sheff v. O'Neill concerned Hartford 's public schools, which had a 95 percent minority population, while schools in adjacent suburbs were over 90 percent white. Basing its ruling on the provision of the Connecticut Constitution barring segregation, the court held that students in the Hartford public schools were racially, ethnically and economically isolated, and that, as a result, Hartford public school students had not been provided a substantially equal educational opportunity as guaranteed by the state constitution. 

Milo Sheff was a fourth grader when the suit was first filed in 1989 on his behalf and that of 16 other students.  The Connecticut Supreme Court ruling was not the end of their legal battle.  Instead, the state and city dragged their feet when it came to implementing the ruling and fighting segregation and inequality in schools.  The Harford schools remained 95 percent Black and Latino.  In 2000 the plaintiffs went back to court and asked the state to dramatically expand magnet schools, which were designed to draw students from the suburbs into Hartford .  In 2003 the plaintiffs and the Governor reached a temporary settlement to establish eight new magnet schools, but in 2004, 15 years after the case was originally filed, Black parents were back in court, demanding more resolute action on the part of Hartford and state officials.  Milo Sheff, whose name is attached to a suit that has been considered a kind of Brown v. Board of Education for Northern schools, is now a prominent hip-hop artist in Connecticut .  

Freedom of Expression – Dress Codes
During the 1983 school year, some students in Waterbury School District wore baggy clothing to school in violation of school policy.  They were suspended. The school argued that the baggy clothing could be to conceal weapons. The students went to court and challenged the constitutionality of the dress code.  The Superior Court of Connecticut upheld the dress code, accepting the school district's argument that it was necessary to maintain a safe school environment for students.

DELAWARE

First Amendment – Prayer in Schools
In 2005, the Dobrich family and another family ("John Doe") that wished to remain anonymous out of fear of intimidation filed a lawsuit in federal district court charging the Indian River School District had created an "environment of religious exclusion" and promoted state-sponsored religion in the school.  At the school Bibles were distributed, teachers promoted Christianity, and Christian prayer was common at school functions.   The Dobrich's daughter was the only Jewish student to graduate in 2004.  At her graduation, the local pastor in his invocation stated: "I also pray for one specific student, that You be with her and guide her in the path that You have for her.  And we ask all these things in Jesus' name."   When the Dobrichs complained, a special school board meeting was held on the subject of prayer at which they received a hostile reception.  The issue was inflamed by the local media, and after receiving threatening phone calls, the Dobrichs moved out of the town.  When the school district rejected an offer to settle the federal lawsuit against the advice of the insurance company that had been representing it, company lawyers then filed a suit against the school district. The Dobrich-Doe case was due to go to trial in the summer of 2007. 

First Amendment – Religious Freedom
A lawsuit was filed against the Henlopen School District by a Muslim family that claimed that school officials were disrespectful of the their faith and did not stop the harassment of their children by other elementary school students.  In 2005, the case was settled when the school district promised to provide teacher training no diversity and a tolerance education program for all students. 

FLORIDA

Corporal Punishment in Schools (US Supreme Court) – Ingraham v. Wright (1977)
A Florida statute and Dade Country School Board policy provided for the punishment of students with one to five "licks" of a flat wooden paddle measuring less that two feet long, a few inches wide and half an inch thick.   During the 1970-1971 school year at Drew High School in Miami, after eighth grader James Ingraham was slow to respond to a teacher's instructions, he was given more than 20 blows while being held over a table.  He needed medical attention after the beating and missed 11 days of school.  Another Drew High School student, ninth grader Roosevelt Andrews, was hit on the arms after some minor infraction of the rules, and could not use one of his arms for a week. 

The students brought a lawsuit claiming that the paddling they received was a violation of the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.  They lost in the lower courts and then appealed to the US Supreme Court. 

The Supreme Court rejected the students' arguments.  The court maintained that there was "historical and contemporary approval of reasonable corporal punishment."  From the days of the American Revolution, moderate force had been used by teachers to discipline students.  The court pointed out that corporal punishment remained an accepted practice in most states  At the time the court issued its decision, in 1977, only two states (Massachusetts and New Jersey) had banned corporal punishment.  The court also maintained that the Eighth Amendment was intended to protect prisoners, not students in schools:  "The openness of the public school and its supervision by the community afford significant safeguards against the kinds of abuses from which the Eighth Amendment protects the prisoner."

Read the decision: http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=430&invol=651

Zero Tolerance for Expression/Search
The Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit upheld the arrest and strip-search of a Killian High School student for distributing an underground newspaper called First Amendment in her Miami-Dade County school. The paper violated the school's zero tolerance policy by including what were perceived to be threats against the school's principal.  The case arose in 1998 when nine Killian High School students were arrested, jailed overnight and later expelled for what they wrote in the pamphlet.  Hate crimes charges against them were later dropped.

(The US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit has jurisdiction in Alabama and Georgia, as well as Florida.)  

Freedom of Expression
In June 2006 the ACLU filed a lawsuit against the Miami-Dade School Board challenging the removal and banning of a series of 24 children's travel books from the library system. The series was banned because of opposition to one book, Vamos a Cuba (Let's Go to Cuba).  The lawsuit points out that this kind of censorship was banned by the US Supreme Court in its 1982 decision in Island Trees v. Pico (see New York). 

Flag Salute
A federal judge ruled in June 2006 that a Boynton Beach High School junior could not be disciplined for failing to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance, and that a student does not have to get a parent's permission in order to be excused from reciting the Pledge.  The lawsuit challenged a Florida law that said the Pledge had to be recited at the beginning of the day in all public schools.

GEORGIA

Sexual Harassment in Schools (US Supreme Court) – Franklin v. Gwinnett County School District (1992)
The US Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Christine Franklin could sue her school district for failing to halt a teacher's sexual advances when she was a student at North Gwinnett High School.   After Franklin filed a complaint, the school district had opened an investigation of the teacher, Andrew Hill, but closed the investigation when Hill agreed to resign on condition that all matters pending against him were dropped. 

Franklin then went to district court, stating she was the victim, and had been left without any possibility of redress for the wrong she had suffered. The case was brought under Title IX of the 1972 federal Education Act, that bars sexual discrimination in schools that receive federal funding.  The district court and the appeals court both ruled that Title IX did not authorize the award of damages.  But the Supreme Court disagreed, ruling that she could demand restitution for the injury inflicted on her, and the courts should decide what damages should be paid.

Read the decision: http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=503&invol=60

Sexual Harassment in Schools (US Supreme Court) - Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education (1999)
In a 5-4 ruling that left the US Supreme Court bitterly divided, the majority of the court decided that school districts do have an obligation to protect students from peer-to-peer sexual harassment. The court ruled that schools can be sued under Title IX of the 1972 Education Act barring sexual discrimination if it can be shown that the sexual harassment is "so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive that it effectively bars the victim's access to an educational opportunity or benefit," and school officials have done nothing to stop it, but instead acted with deliberate indifference.   The case involved LaShonda Davis, a fifth grader in a Georgia school, who, over a period of five months, was taunted so severely that her grades dropped and she contemplated suicide.  School officials did nothing in response to her mother's complaints. 

1. Listen to the oral arguments: http://www.oyez.org/oyez/resource/case/474/

2. Read the decision: http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=000&invol=97-843

Freedom of Expression
Students in Gwinnett County were suspended for posting to a website created off school grounds which served as a place where students could vent about a particular teacher.   The ACLU brought a lawsuit arguing that there was no evidence of substantial disruption or imminent danger in the school and that the students should not be punished for their off-campus speech.  The school district then initiated an out-of-court settlement proceeding.

Dress Code
The ACLU has brought a lawsuit on behalf of an honor student in the Gwinnett Country school district who has been repeatedly subjected to disciplinary actions by Brookwood High School officials for wearing clothing associated with African American culture.  The school district has refused to publish a list of prohibited clothing, and the lawsuit argues that the dress code is too broad.

Zero Tolerance
In 2000, 11-year-old Ashley Smith was suspended from Garrett Middle School in Austell, Georgia for having a ten inch chain dangling from her Tweety Bird key ring.  Three days later, the officials reversed themselves and agreed that the chain did not appear a dangerous weapon.  By this time Ashley's parents had denounced the school's zero tolerance policy, and enrolled her elsewhere.

Zero Tolerance
The ACLU is representing two students who were suspended for cutting a birthday cake with a knife that was present at the school.  They may also face criminal charges. 

HAWAII

Searches
A federal lawsuit was filed in 2000 on behalf of a 12-year-old girl who was arrested by school officials and city police officers, handcuffed and partially strip-searched over a missing $20 bill without her parents being notified.

IDAHO

First Amendment - Prayer in Schools
The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled in 1998 that Madison School District's policy of permitting top students in each senior class to decide whether to include a prayer, a poem, a reading or a musical presentation in graduation speeches was constitutional.

ILLINOIS

Religion in Schools
In the mid 1990s, the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit ruled that students at a junior high school in Wauconda have a First Amendment right to distribute religious publications.  The court also upheld the school's right to regulate distribution according to "time, place and manner" rules, and said it could restrict materials by non students.

(The US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit has jurisdiction over Indiana and Wisconsin as well as Illinois.) 

INDIANA

Freedom of Expression - Dress Codes
David Griggs, a student at Elmhurst High School, challenged his school's dress code that banned "apparel depicting...symbols of violence."  Griggs had been disciplined for wearing a T-shirt in support of the United States Marine Corps that featured a picture of an M-16 rifle and the Creed of the US Marines which ends: "I must shoot straighter than my enemy who is trying to kill me.  I must shoot him before he shoots me."   He sued the school district in federal district court, claiming the dress code was overbroad.  The court agreed with him.  The judges saw no sign that the T-shirt caused disruption at school and no other student had complained about the T-shirt message.  In the court’s opinion the school system policy as applied to this particular T-shirt served “no legitimate pedagogical concern.”

Equal Opportunity
In March 2006, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled in favor of the parents represented by the ACLU in a case challenging fees for public school students at an Indianapolis school.  Although the Indiana Constitution states that "tuition shall be without charge," the school had been charging students a $20 mandatory student services fee in order to cover the costs of nurses, athletics, and counselors.  The ruling did not apply to fees for textbooks.  Indiana is one of ten states to require students to pay for the books they use in school.

Freedom of Expression
At the end of 2006, district court ruled on behalf of three Knightstown High School sophomores who were expelled for making a film off-campus about a doll that kills a teacher, "The Teddy Bear Master."  The students were allowed to return to school and shared a $69,000 settlement. 

Freedom of Expression
In 2007, the Indiana Court of Appeals ruled that the principal of Greencastle Middle School infringed on a student's  First Amendment rights when he put her on probation for creating a MySpace page containing expletives and criticisms of the principal.   The state court found her comments were protected under the free expression provision of the Indiana Constitution. 

IOWA

Freedom of Expression (US Supreme Court)- Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (1969)
By a vote of 7-2, the US Supreme Court upheld the First Amendment rights of students to protest the Vietnam War by wearing black armbands to school. The ruling opened the door for an expansion of student rights around the country.

A few days before the armbands were worn by John Tinker, aged 15, his sister Mary Beth, aged 13, and their friend, Christopher Eckhardt, aged 16, the principals of Des Moines schools adopted a policy that any student who wore an armband would be asked to remove it, and would be sent home if he or she refused to do so.  When they refused to take their armbands off, the three students were sent home.  They did not return to school until after the planned period for the protest had expired. 

The students then went to court, arguing that armbands were a form of symbolic speech and their First Amendment rights to freedom of expression had been violated by their suspensions.  Both the district court and the appeals court said their constitutional rights had not been violated. But the US Supreme Court, with Justice Abe Fortas writing the majority opinion, disagreed.   He declared: "In our system, state-operated schools may not be enclaves of totalitarianism.  School officials do not possess absolute authority over their students.  Students in school as well as out of school are 'persons' under our Constitution.  They are possessed of fundamental rights which the State must respect..."  Censoring student expression is impermissible, the court ruled, unless it "materially and substantially" disrupts the educational process or invades the rights of others.  This restraint on student censorship is known as the "Tinker standard."

1. Learn more from John Tinker, Mary Beth Tinker and Chris Eckhardt

2. Listen to the oral arguments: http://www.oyez.org/oyez/resource/case/391/

3. Read the decision: http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=393&invol=503

'Gang' Symbols
A panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit ruled in the mid 1990s that an Iowa school district policy barring gang symbols and colors was unconstitutionally "vague" (not specific enough).  The case was brought by a junior at West High School in Davenport, who was threatened with expulsion unless she had a small cross tattoo removed from her hand.  After laser surgery to remove the tattoo, she sued, saying it was not a gang symbol. 

(The US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit has jurisdiction over North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Minnesota, Missouri and Arkansas, as well as Iowa.) 

KANSAS

Zero Tolerance – Expression
In January 2000, at Bluestem High School in Leon, Kansas, Sarah Boman – an honor roll student – posted an artwork poem written in a spiral pattern on a classroom door.  The poem, written from the point of view of a delusional person whose dog had been killed and who threatened to kill others, was an example of "repetitive art" required for an art college portfolio.  She had often put up her artwork for her high school classmates to see.  But before the day was out, she had been suspended and was soon expelled for the rest of the school year and told she needed a psychological examination before returning to school.    School authorities said her poem was seen as a "threat."  A federal district court ruled that her First Amendment rights were violated when she was expelled, and that the school was wrong to say she could only return if she underwent a psychiatric evaluation.

KENTUCKY

Religion in Schools (US Supreme Court)- Stone v. Graham (1980)
The US Supreme Court decided that a Kentucky law requiring the posting of the Ten Commandments in each classroom in the state was unconstitutional since it was plainly religious and had no secular purpose.   The court stated, "This is not a case in which the Ten Commandments are integrated into the school curriculum, where the Bible may constitutionally be used in an appropriate study of history, civilization, ethics, comparative religion, or the like.  Posting of religious texts on the wall serves no such educational function."

Read the decision: http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=449&invol=39

LOUISIANA

Freedom of Expression
Citing the Tinker case, a federal district court judge in Louisiana in 1999 upheld the right of Jennifer Roe to wear a black armband to her school in Bossier City to protest the school's uniform policy.  Roe, a sophomore and honor student when she wore her armband, was told by the principal to take it off or she would be subjected to punishment.  He did not change his mind after hearing about the Tinker Supreme Court precedent. Roe said took her stand because "our First Amendment rights are slowly being taken away, and people aren't noticing."

Personal Appearance – Hair
A US district court in Louisiana has upheld the Morehouse Parish School Board's ban on male students wearing their hair in braids.  The school district dress code prohibited male students from wearing braids, but allowed female students to do so.  The parents of a freshman at Bastrop High School sued the school board saying their son's equal protection rights had been violated by a code which treated females and males differently.  They said it was common for African American males to wear braids, and they did not cause a disturbance in the school.  But the court agreed with the school board that the ban advanced legitimate reasons, such as imposing discipline, creating respect for authority and conforming to community standards.  To reach its decision, the court relied on a 1972 ruling from the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, Karr v. Schmidt, which held by 8-7 that a student does not have the constitutional right to wear his hair as he sees fit.  The Fifth Circuit ruling applies to students in Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas.  (The US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit ruled in the opposite way in the 1970 case of Richards v. Thurston which applies to students in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Maine and Puerto Rico).          

Dress Code
In 2000, school officials in Lafayette, Louisiana settled a lawsuit with the parents of eight Rastafarian children who were being barred from school because their hair and headgear was not in conformity with the school's dress code.  According to the terms of the settlement, the children can keep their dreadlocks and wear headgear that matches school uniform colors.  The students must allow officials to inspect their headgear everyday for illegal contraband.

MAINE

Zero Tolerance
A ninth grader in Portland, Maine was expelled by her school in 2001 without being given a hearing for violating her school's zero tolerance drug policy that bans possession or use of Tylenol.  ACLU filed a lawsuit.

MARYLAND

Drug Testing
In an out-of-court settlement in 2000, Talbot County school district backed down from the requirement that 18 students undergo drug testing or face expulsion for attending an off-campus party where it was rumored someone had used drugs.  School officials agreed to stop all student drug testing in county schools and pay damages.  The Talbot County Board of Education agreed that instead of administering a urinalysis test, school officials would inform parents if they thought a student was taking drugs. 

MASSACHUSETTS

Personal Appearance – Hair
In 1970, the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit upheld the right of a 17-year-old student from Marlboro, Massachusetts to wear his hair as he saw fit.  Bob Richards had been suspended for violating a school policy against "unusually long hair."  The court found the policy unconstitutional, and stated that Richard's hair was protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment which "establishes a sphere of personal liberty for every individual" as long as that liberty did not interfere with the rights of others.  The court stated that forcing students to adopt "conventional standards of appearance" is not a "justifiable part of the educational process."

Two years later, the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled in the opposite way, meaning that students in some states have more protection in terms of their personal appearance in public schools than students in other states (see Texas). 

(The US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit has jurisdiction in Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Puerto Rico as well as Massachusetts.) 

Freedom of Expression
In 1993, Jeff and Jonathan Pyle, two high school students in South Hadley, Massachusetts, were sent home for wearing "Coed Naked" and other T-shirts that the administration thought were "vulgar," "lewd," and "demeaning to women."  They brought a lawsuit against their school, arguing that schools cannot censor student speech simply because it may be "offensive" to others.

They won an important victory at the trial court level.  The judge ruled that schools cannot practice "viewpoint discrimination."  Picking which viewpoints will and will not be allowed was unconstitutional.  But the judge also ruled that school administrators may censor speech that they regard as "vulgar" or "lewd."

The brothers appealed this part of the decision, and eventually ended up before the state Supreme Judicial Court.  In 1996, that court ruled unanimously that the state's Student Free Expression Act protects shirts which teachers consider to be "vulgar," but which do not disrupt the educational process.  As a result, Massachusetts now has the broadest student free speech law in the country. 

1. Link to Student Free Expression Act

2. Meet Jeff Pyle

Freedom of Expression
The US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit ruled in 1997 in a case from Lexington High School that student journalists have the right to refuse ads submitted to their publications.  The student editors of the yearbook and newspaper refused to accept an ad encouraging sexual abstinence, and were sued in federal court.  The court agreed that the students could refuse the ad since they, and not school officials, made content decisions.  The appeals court decision was based in part on the Massachusetts Student Free Expression Act. 

(The US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit has jurisdiction in Maine, Rhode Island, New Hampshire and Puerto Rico as well as Massachusetts.)

Freedom of Expression
After the ACLU intervened, Holliston High School agreed to end its punishment of two female students who had displayed protest signs during the annual talent show.  The students had been suspended from classes and barred from the school prom and graduation for protesting against what they regarded as the unfair expulsion of two other students.

Zero Tolerance for Expression
In 2001, the highest court in Massachusetts (the Supreme Judicial Court) upheld the expulsion of a 12-year-old Worcester student for two drawings he made of himself shooting his teacher.  The court decided that the picture could be considered a criminal act because of the "climate of apprehension" caused by the Columbine and other school shootings.

Zero Tolerance for Expression
After the ACLU in 2000 challenged the suspension of a Boston Latin Academy student who frightened an English teacher with the vivid horror story he wrote as part of a writing assignment, the suspension was overturned.  The ACLU pointed out that the suspension violated the Student Free Expression Act, which gives students in Massachusetts the broadest free speech rights in the country.  

Religion in Schools
Six students from Westfield High School received one-day internal suspensions in 2003 after they distributed 500 candy canes containing a message about the birth of Jesus. The school principal had denied them permission to distribute the candy canes because of a school policy barring the distribution of non school and non curricular material.  The students won a federal lawsuit that maintained their First Amendment rights had been violated.

Dress Code
In the mid 1990s, Adam Field, a student from Greater New Bedford Regional Vocation Technical High School was suspended from school because his hair measured more than 2 and ½ inches below his ear.  The Massachusetts Superior Court barred his exclusion from school and held that the school's "good grooming provision" was unconstitutional.  The court invoked the US Appeals Court for the First Circuit ruling in the 1970 case Richard v. Thurston to uphold Field's liberty interest to wear his hair as he chose.

Condom Distribution
In the mid 1990s, the Supreme Judicial Court, the highest court in Massachusetts, upheld the condom-distribution program established by Falmouth School district for students in grades 7-12.  Under the plan, students could obtain condoms from the nurse or vending machines located in restrooms.  This was the first time a state high court had upheld a condom-distribution program without requiring parental consent.  The US Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal in the case.

Searches
The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ruled in 2001 against the search of a Boston high school student who was targeted because of his truant behavior.  Marijuana was found in his shoe.  The court said there was no reasonable suspicion to search the student and that the search violated his Fourth Amendment rights.   According to the court, "hunches and unparticularized suspicion do not constitute reasonable grounds for the search of a student."

Locked Bathrooms
After hundreds of students at Dracut High School staged a sit-in in 2000 to protest locked bathrooms, school officials agreed to keep them unlocked on a trial basis.  Before the protest, students had to get a pass to go to the bathroom, sign in at the bathroom door, find a teacher to unlock it, sign out when they left, and sign back in when they returned to class.

MICHIGAN

Freedom of Expression
Bretton Barber wore a T-shirt to Dearborn High School in Michigan with a picture of President Bush and the caption "International Terrorist." The 16-year-old student was told he should take off the shirt or go home.  He refused to remove the shirt and left school.  He filed a federal free speech lawsuit with the help of the ACLU, and won his case in October 2003, with the district court judge stating that "there is no evidence that the T-shirt created any disturbance or disruption" at school.  The judge also rejected the school district's position that school is an inappropriate place for political debate, maintaining that on the contrary, "students benefit when school officials provide an environment where they can openly express their diverging viewpoints and when they learn to tolerate the opinions of others."

Freedom of Expression
In November 2003, Alexander Smith was largely – but not entirely – victorious in the lawsuit he brought after he was suspended for 10 days from Pleasant High School for reading aloud to friends at his lunch table a commentary criticizing the school's new tardiness policy and calling the school principal and assistant principal names.  The judge ruled that the Michigan state law which required the suspension or expulsion of students who engaged in a "verbal assault" in school was, as Smith had claimed, unconstitutional.  But the judge also said administrators had the right to discipline the student because of the "vicious and personal" names he had called school officials. 

Discrimination
In early 2006 the mother of the only Black student at a school in Frankfurt, Michigan filed a lawsuit on behalf of her daughter, stating that school administrators had forced the third grader to use a separate restroom and other students had taunted her with racial slurs. 

MINNESOTA

Freedom of Expression
A US district court judge ruled that a high school student's rights were violated when the principal of the high school in Woodbury, Minnesota had told him to take off a sweatshirt that read "Straight Pride."  The judge said the school had failed to show that the shirt could disrupt the educational process.

Sexual Harassment
In the early 1990s, Katy Lyle was awarded a $15,000 settlement for "alleged mental anguish and suffering" brought on by the refusal of school officials at Central High School in Duluth to deal with graffiti aimed at her in the boys' bathroom.  The sexually-explicit graffiti, which fueled incessant taunts, remained on the walls for 18 months despite more than 15 complaints by her mother to the school.  The bathroom was finally scrubbed clean by her brother on a visit home from college.  

MISSISSIPPI

Due Process
In 2006, the ACLU took up the case of three displaced boys who were expelled after getting into a fight at school.  The boys, two of whom have special needs, recently migrated to Mississippi from New Orleans after being displaced by Hurricane Katrina.  School officials have not stated what disciplinary action, if any, it will be taken against the other boys involved in the fight.  The usual punishment is a 10-day suspension.   

MISSOURI

Freedom of Expression (US Supreme Court) – Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier (1988)
In 1988 the US Supreme Court gave school officials the authority to censor student expression in curricular and extra-curricular activities that could "reasonably" be related to the school. 

The case arose in 1983 when the principal of Hazelwood East High School in St. Louis censored the Spectrum, the student newspaper, by removing the middle pages because he didn't like two stories on pregnancy and divorce. He took this action in spite of the fact that the statement of policy of the journalism class which produced the paper and School Board policy embraced the Tinker standard upholding student rights to freedom of expression unless that expression substantially disrupted the running of the school or invaded the rights of others.   He later argued that he found the articles were inappropriate for young teenagers and involved possible invasions of privacy.  (When the articles were published two years later by a St. Louis paper, few people could figure out what the fuss was all about).  The principal did not consult with students before removing the two articles he didn't like and four others that appeared on the same pages, and then sending the paper to the printer. 

When editors Cathy Kuhlmeier and Leslie Smart went to court on grounds that their First Amendment rights had been violated, the district court upheld the school, but the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit ruled for the students.  Then the US Supreme Court, by 5-3, declared that the principal had a "valid educational purpose" for censoring the paper.  The opinion written by Justice White maintained that "A school need not tolerate student speech that is inconsistent with its basic educational mission, even though the government could not censor similar speech outside the school...Educators do not offend the First Amendment by exercising editorial control over the style and content of student speech in school-sponsored expressive activities so long as their actions are reasonably related to legitimate pedagogical concerns."

In its decision, the Supreme Court majority stated that it is not overturning its "Tinker standard."  Individual students still have the right to express their personal views on school premises.   But, the court said, school officials do have the authority to regulate "school-sponsored publications, theatrical productions, and other expressive activities that students, parents, and members of the public might reasonably perceive to bear the imprimatur of the school.  These activities may fairly be characterized as part of the school curriculum, whether or not they occur in a traditional classroom setting, so long as they are supervised by faculty members and designed to impart particular knowledge or skills to student participants and audiences."      

In his dissent, Justice William Brennan did not buy the argument that there should be a difference between individual student expression protected by the Tinker standard and "school-sponsored expression."  Calling the principal's action a case of "brutal censorship," he declared, "Censorship...in no way furthers the curricular purposes of a student newspaper, unless one believes that the purpose of the school newspaper is to teach students that the press ought never report bad news, express unpopular views, or print a thought that might upset its sponsors...The Court opens its analysis in this case by purporting to reaffirm Tinker's time-tested proposition that public-school students 'do not shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.'  That is an ironic introduction to an opinion that denudes high-school students of much of the First Amendment protection that Tinker itself prescribed.  Instead of 'teach(ing) children to respect the diversity of ideas that is fundamental to the American system,' and 'that our Constitution is a living reality, not parchment preserved under glass,' the Court today 'teach(es) youth to discount important principles of our government as mere platitudes.'  The young men and women of Hazelwood East expected a civics lesson, but not the one the Court teaches them today."

1. Listen to the oral arguments: http://www.oyez.org/oyez/resource/case/158/

2. Read the decision: http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=484&invol=260

3. Find out what some states have done to protect students from the impact of the Hazelwood decision

Dress Code
In January 2006 a senior in Jackson, Missouri who was ordered to change his clothes because he wore a kilt to a school dance received a letter of apology from the school superintendent.  The student, Nathan Warmack, had worn the kilt to honor his Scottish heritage.  The superintendent said he will train staff in the proper interpretation of the school's dress code.

Dress Code
A federal lawsuit was recently filed on behalf of Brad Mathewson, a 16-year-old student who was disciplined at his high school for wearing a T-shirt that bore a pink triangle with the words, "Make a Difference!"  He got the shirt from a Gay-Straight Alliance at a school he had previously attended.  He was told to turn it inside out or go home and change.  The shirt had caused no disruption at the school. 

Searches
The ACLU intervened when fourth grade students at the Adrian Elementary School near Kansas City, Missouri were searched and in some cases stripped after a student lost track of a war medal that had been brought to school.  The medal was later found on the floor.   School officials agreed to apologize to parents and to review the school's search policy.

MONTANA

First Amendment
EarlY in 2002, a Great Falls High School senior, Kenny Volk, was suspended for posting photos of female classmates on his personal web site under the heading "10 hottest freshman girls."  The principal of the school, who had asked him not to post the pictures, said he was guilty of "insubordination."  Other students staged a protest outside the principal's office saying that Volk's First Amendment rights had been violated and a few days later, a district court judge issued a temporary injunction against the school and Volk returned to class.  But the injunction was only temporary, and when it expired, the school board voted unanimously to have him transferred to a different school.  Rather than pursue a lawsuit against the school, Volk decided to move on to university and eventually to law school. 

NEBRASKA

Freedom of Expression
A Nebraska valedictorian was told in 2005 that her diploma would be withheld if she went ahead with a speech using a word the school considered offensive although it was not obscene.  After the ACLU intervened, she was able to give the speech using her choice of words. 

Freedom of Expression
In 2005, Millard high school told a student he could not hand out flyers against the Iraq War.  The flyers were confiscated, and he was told he would be suspended if he tried to hand them out.  After the intervention of the ACLU, the school agreed to let the student distribute the flyers in the "place and manner" indicated by the student handbook.

Freedom of Assembly
Students at Norfolk Senior High wanted to form a Gay Straight Alliance (GSA) and have it meet at the school during "club hour."   The school administration and school board denied their request even though other non-curriculum clubs (including religious club and an anti-racism club) meet at the school and have the privileges requested by the students.   It took a letter from the ACLU to convince the school that the GSA should be treated in the same manner as other student clubs.

NEVADA

Harassment
Washoe County School District has reached a $451,000 settlement with a gay student who was beaten, spit on, and had his life threatened at three different high schools in Reno.  The school district also agreed to implement policies protecting gay and lesbian students.

NEW HAMPSHIRE

Zero Tolerance for Expression
The New Hampshire Supreme Cou