In 1969, the Supreme Court handed down the ruling in the famous Tinker v. Des Moines case, in which it ruled that student speech can only be regulated if it causes a substantial interference with the activities of the students.
However, recently, high schools and even lower federal courts have been taking unconstitutional actions to ban T-shirts of varying messages. From banning pro-gay rights shirts and anti-gay rights shirts, shirts with confederate flags to shirts with American flags and even shirts with the word “feminist,” high schools are overstepping their bounds by forcing students to censor their shirts. Under Tinker standards, there has to be evidence that a certain shirt or other expression is going to cause a disturbance. These will not.
Yes, displaying the confederate flag is ignorant, and I will roll my eyes at those who wear it “proudly,” but from what I’ve experienced, they aren’t actively disruptive in the classroom. At my high school, someone had a confederate flag on his truck, and although we would mock him behind his back, no one ever threatened him, and it never caused a classroom disturbance.
What’s truly ridiculous is that federal courts are upholding clearly unconstitutional rulings. In Virginia, a middle school student’s T-shirt that read “Drugs Suck” was banned because the word “suck” is supposedly vulgar. Meanwhile, another student’s shirt featuring singer Marilyn Manson was banned because of the “offensive” content of his songs. This sets a dangerous precedent under which school administrations can ban whatever they feel is offensive without considering the previous Tinker disruption standards. Just because some individuals find a shirt offensive does not mean that the shirt is disruptive. What constitutes something as offensive widely varies and is subjective.
Of course, I’m not advocating that students be allowed to wear whatever they want to. Although it is legal to wear anti-abortion shirts, I’m certain that a picture of an aborted fetus goes above and beyond what’s necessary to get anti-abortion messages across. Besides being a little gross, it would constitute a serious risk of disruption.
All I’m advocating for is more freedom for students to be able to express themselves. School administrators have no right to ban shirts just because they don’t like them. Students’ free speech should be protected because fostering opinions among students should be more important than potentially offending someone else.
