When 18-year-old Joseph Fredericks displayed a banner stating, “Bong Hits 4 Jesus,” on a public sidewalk, he didn’t think his silly joke would result in the largest revocation of students’ First Amendment rights in U.S. history.
Nonetheless, that’s just what happened when, on June 18, the U.S. Supreme Court decided in a split vote that Fredericks’ principal had the right to punish the high school student for setting a bad example. The student’s sign was neither displayed nor constructed on school property, but rather was presented on a public sidewalk. The student unfurled his banner to coincide with the passing of the Olympic Torch in front of his high school.
“It was reasonable for (the principal) to conclude that the banner promoted illegal drug use – and that failing to act would send a powerful message to the students in her charge,” stated Chief Justice John Roberts for the court’s majority, as reported by CNN.
No, folks, we haven’t stepped into a time warp and re-entered the ultimate era of conservatism –1950s MaCarthyism – when basic freedoms of speech were ignored to keep everyone happy and delusional.
This is 2007, and our most respected judicial body has inadvertently decided that while it is constitutional for the Patriot Act to permit unapproved governmental wire tapping, a high schooler can’t express himself freely on American streets without possible censure from his high school administrators.
Yes, drugs are illegal, and yes, the student’s statement was encouraging illegal behavior; not to mention, it was pretty stupid. But last time I checked, talking about drugs was still legal, and last time I checked, there was a group of people in this country who think marijuana should be legal, and they aren’t stupid.
The First Amendment doesn’t only protect intelligent, non-offensive speech about things its citizens can legally do. The First Amendment exists to protect speech that is mocking, satiric, political, stupid, hateful (without directly inciting violence), silly and critical of its government – speech that might piss off and embarrass a high school principal at a major community event.
As anyone who went to high school can attest, administrators are typically more concerned with maintaining their school systems’ sterling images than respecting teenagers’ opinions or rights to protest.
Some might argue high school students do not have the same legal rights as adults. In one sense, this is true.
Court case Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier clarifies the role of administrators in censoring student speech. The Hazelwood decision states administrators at a public school can discipline a student for disruptive or inappropriate behavior on school property, with the defense that said behavior is distracting other students from learning. Yet, no academic body previously has been given jurisdiction to punish its students for beliefs or statements expressed outside the classroom, regardless of their proximity to a school campus.
Call me crazy, but I always thought that after the bell rings and classes are adjourned, parents are the ones who are in charge of regulating their children’s behavior, however egregious or stupid it might be.
For instance, what if a Christian student wants to pray in the middle of a public street while waiting for the school bus, and an administrator interprets this act as “inappropriate,” because the school wants to maintain a secular image? Alternatively, what if a student wants to distribute safe-sex pamphlets on the weekend, and school administrators think this activism is contradicting their sexual education program’s pro-abstinence policy, encouraging underage sex, or worse, the pamphlets’ images from medical texts are graphic enough for the principal to ignorantly consider them pornographic?
Air-headed administrators could use this ruling to liberally censure any speech they consider “embarrassing.” Maybe our current Supreme Court justices should make sure high school principals are precise at interpreting the meaning of speech and are incapable of experiencing self-righteous power trips before they allot them such unchecked freedom of judgment.
Also, if students can now be prosecuted for their personal beliefs and statements made outside schools, how far will the restrictions go? Will teens be allowed to participate in political discussions about issues like civil rights, abortion and terrorism? Like it or not, culture is often synthesized by our teenagers, and like it or not, our teenagers grow up to be our voting adults. By treating them like sub-citizens, you are only alienating them from the democratic process.
If an 18 year old is mature enough to enlist in the draft, he should be old enough to write “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” on a banner. It’s shocking that the same generation of teens who propelled the civil rights movement forward and ended the
Vietnam War has allowed this kind of unconstitutional and morally-bereft decision to restrict their children from protesting peacefully outside their high schools.
If youth speech were restricted to inhibit criticism of currently-held laws in our country’s history, segregation and slavery could still be in existence today, as well as laws against the sale of alcohol, laws restricting peaceful protest and laws dictating Americans must maintain the moral fabric of previous generations, without consideration for––– cultural change.
Look back at the previous seminal Supreme Court case, Tinker v. Des Moines, which up to this point had been considered a precedent for student rights. The then-rational Supreme Court held that students “do not shed their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse gate.” The First Amendment, according to that decision, protects public school students from oppression inspired by their social or political speech.
But not today. Today, for embarrassing an administrator, a student goes from being an American citizen to a public relations liability. While “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” might just be a dumb phrase, its invention has led to a Supreme Court decision that can only be labeled a terrible misjudgment of
First Amendment rights – a scary foreshadowing of the increased reduction of Americans’ rights to free speech in the years to come.