At the Schoolhouse Gate: Students' Rights and the Supreme Court

Rights at the Schoolhouse Gate

1The Bill of Rights, ratified in 1791, lists rights that the government may not take away. The First Amendment protects freedom of speech and of the press. The Fourth Amendment protects the right of the people to be secure “against unreasonable searches and seizures.” At first these protections limited only the national government. After the Fourteenth Amendment of 1868 barred states from taking away liberty without due process of law, the Supreme Court step by step applied most of the Bill of Rights to state and local governments as well, including public school boards.

2Words such as “unreasonable” and “freedom of speech” do not explain themselves. When a person claims that a government action broke the Constitution, courts decide through judicial review, the power to rule whether a law or government action fits the Constitution. A Supreme Court decision becomes a precedent that other courts follow. A justice who disagrees may write a dissent.

3In December 1965, a few students in Des Moines, Iowa, wore black armbands to school to mourn those killed in the Vietnam War and to support a truce. The principals had just made a rule banning armbands, and the students were suspended. In Tinker v. Des Moines (1969), the Court ruled for the students. Justice Abe Fortas wrote that students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.” A school may limit student speech, he wrote, only if it would substantially disrupt school or invade the rights of others. Justice Hugo Black dissented, warning that the ruling would weaken teachers' authority.

4Later cases drew limits. In New Jersey v. T.L.O. (1985), a vice principal searched a 14-year-old student's purse after a teacher reported that she had been smoking in a restroom. The Court ruled that the Fourth Amendment applies to public school officials but that they need only reasonable grounds for a search, not the stricter “probable cause” police need to get a warrant. In Bethel School District v. Fraser (1986), the Court upheld a suspension for a student's speech full of crude jokes at a school assembly. In Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier (1988), it ruled that a principal could remove articles from a newspaper written by a journalism class, because the paper was part of the school's lessons. Only eight justices took part in Hazelwood, because one seat on the Court was empty.