Tinker v. Des Moines déjà vu?

Lauren Thiery
To You Editor, Fused

The Watson Chapel School District, based in Arkansas, filed a petition for writ of certiorari to the Supreme Court asking it to decide the constitutionality of punishing students for wearing protest armbands.

In September, students Chris Lowry, Colton Dougan and Michael Joseph wore black armbands in protest of the Watson Chapel School District’s dress code policy. However, their school district suspended them for doing so. The students, as well as their parents, filed a suit, saying that the school district violated the students’ First Amendment rights. The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of these students.

However, in the petition for writ of certiorari to the Supreme Court, the Watson Chapel School District claims that the 8th Circuit improperly applied Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District while making their decision. In the 1969 U.S. Supreme Court decision of Tinker, the Court ruled that students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of expression at the schoolhouse gate.” The Court also said that these students were allowed to freely express themselves unless their actions caused a “material and substantial disruption” of “normal school operations or an invasion of rights of other students.”

The writ states that “the prioritization of emphasis by the school district on one activity versus another is just the type of discretionary function of local schools that courts should not interfere with. As this Court has noted, the determination of what manner of speech in the classroom or in the school assembly is appropriate and properly rests with the school rather than the federal courts.”

Lowry v. Watson Chapel School District is an unacceptable echo of the past. It is a shame that a landmark case, such as Tinker, is essentially being repeated nearly 40 years later. The issues of Tinker should not have to be challenged and dealt with yet again, and the students of the Watson Chapel School District should not be forced to go to the Supreme Court in order to have their rights to free speech be honored.