Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District

Facts:

• Petitioners, three public school pupils in Des Moines, Iowa, [John F Tinker 15yo, Christopher Eckhardt 16yo, Mary Beth Tinker 13yo]
• group [parents and students] determined to publicize their objections to the hostilities in Vietnam and their support for a truce by wearing black armbands during the holiday season
• Des Moines schools became aware of the plan to wear armbands. On December 14, 1965, ... adopted a policy that any student wearing an armband to school would be asked to remove it, and, if he refused, he would be suspended until he returned without the armband.
• [petitioners] black armbands to their schools.
• They were all sent home and suspended from school until they would come back without their armbands.
• They sought nominal damages and an injunction against a regulation that the respondents had promulgated banning the wearing of armbands.

Procedural History:

• This complaint was filed in the United States District Court by petitioners
• [petitioners sought] injunction restraining the respondent school officials and the respondent members of the board of directors of the school district from disciplining the petitioners, and it sought nominal damages.
• District Court dismissed the complaint. It upheld the constitutionality of the school authorities' action on the ground that it was reasonable in order to prevent disturbance of school discipline.
• [District] court referred to, but expressly declined to follow, the Fifth Circuit's holding in a similar case that the wearing of symbols like the armbands cannot be prohibited unless it "materially and substantially interfere[s] with the requirements of appropriate discipline in the operation of the school." Burnside v. Byars, 363 F.2d 744, 749 (1966)
• District Court recognized that the wearing of an armband for the purpose of expressing certain views is the type of symbolic act that is within the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment.
• [was the case heard by a selection of the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit ??]
• Court of Appeals [for the Eighth Circuit], sitting en banc, affirmed by an equally divided court.

Petitioner's Claim(s):

Issues:

• First Amendment rights, applied in light of the special characteristics of the school environment, are available to teachers and students. [via 14th incorporation]
• Our problem lies in the area where students in the exercise of First Amendment rights collide with the rules of the school authorities.

Holding(s) and Disposition:

• We reverse and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
• conduct was within the protection of the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth
• [non-distruptive] In wearing armbands, the petitioners were quiet and passive.
• [non-impinging on rights of others] They were not disruptive, and did not impinge upon the rights of others.
• A prohibition against expression of opinion, without any evidence that the rule is necessary to avoid substantial interference with school discipline or the rights of others, is not permissible under the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

Rationale:

Fortas majority opinion (??)

• First Amendment rights, applied in light of the special characteristics of the school environment, are available to teachers and students. [50 years of precedent]
• if he does so without "materially and substantially interfer[ing] with the requirements of appropriate discipline in the operation of the school" and without colliding with the rights of others. Burnside v. Byars, supra, at 749
• [Overview of the Law. Section I]
• First Amendment rights, applied in light of the special characteristics of the school environment, are available to teachers and students. [50 years of precedent]
• Our problem lies in the area where students in the exercise of First Amendment rights collide with the rules of the school authorities.
• [Detailed Reasoning. Section II]
• does not relate to regulation of the length of skirts or the type of clothing, to hair style, or deportment. Cf. Ferrell v. Dallas Independent School District, 392 F.2d 697 (1968)
• does not concern aggressive, disruptive action or even group demonstrations.
• direct, primary First Amendment rights akin to "pure speech."
• silent, passive expression of opinion, unaccompanied by any disorder or disturbance on the part of petitioners.
• no evidence whatever of petitioners' interference, actual or nascent, with the schools' work
• [no evidence whatever] of collision with the rights of other students to be secure
• [no evidence whatever of collision with the rights of other students] to be let alone.
• does not concern speech or action that intrudes upon the work of the schools or the rights of other students.
• District Court concluded that the action of the school authorities was reasonable because it was based upon their fear of a disturbance from the wearing of the armbands.
• But, in our system, undifferentiated fear or apprehension of disturbance is not enough to overcome the right to freedom of expression.
• where there is no finding and no showing that engaging in the forbidden conduct would "materially and substantially interfere with the requirements of appropriate discipline in the operation of the school," the prohibition cannot be sustained. Burnside v. Byars
• action of the school authorities appears to have been based upon an urgent wish to avoid the controversy which might result from the expression
• school authorities did not purport to prohibit the wearing of all symbols of political or controversial significance. [discriminatory]
• Students in school ... are possessed of fundamental rights which the State must respect

Stewart concurring

• I cannot share the Court's uncritical assumption that, school discipline aside, the First Amendment rights of children are coextensive with those of adults. Ginsberg v. New York, 390 U. S. 629.
• a child -- like someone in a captive audience -- is not possessed of that full capacity for individual choice which is the presupposition of First Amendment guarantees." Id. at 649-650

White concurring

• first, that the Court continues to recognize a distinction between communicating by words and communicating by acts or conduct which sufficiently impinges on some valid state interest
• second, that I do not subscribe to everything the Court of Appeals said about free speech in its opinion in Burnside v. Byars, 363 F.2d 744, 748 (C.A. 5th Cir.1966)

Black dissent (??)

• Abrogation by this court of duties/determinations of state supported public schools officials
• majority opinion relies upon discredited McReynolds reasonableness doctrine
• [Detailed Reasoning]
• The Court's holding in this case ushers in what I deem to be an entirely new era in which the power to control pupils by the elected "officials of state supported public schools ..." in the United States is in ultimate effect transferred to the Supreme Court.
• As I read the Court's opinion, it relies upon the following grounds:
• First, the Court concludes that the wearing of armbands is "symbolic speech," which is "akin to pure speech,'"
• Secondly, the Court decides that the public schools are an appropriate place to exercise "symbolic speech" as long as normal school functions are not "unreasonably" disrupted.
• Finally, the Court arrogates to itself, rather than to the State's elected officials charged with running the schools, the decision as to which school disciplinary regulations are "reasonable."
• I have never believed that any person has a right to give speeches or engage in demonstrations where he pleases and when he pleases.
• rights of free speech and assembly "do not mean that everyone with opinions or beliefs to express may address a group at any public place and at any time."
• Even a casual reading of the record shows that this armband did divert students' minds from their regular lessons ....
• if the time has come when pupils of state-supported schools, kindergartens, grammar schools, or high schools, can defy and flout orders of school officials to keep their minds on their own schoolwork, it is the beginning of a new revolutionary era of permissiveness in this country fostered by the judiciary.
• test of reasonableness, Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U. S. 390 (1923), and Bartels v. Iowa, 262 U. S. 404 (1923)
• "reasonableness" constitutional test dead on the battlefield Ferguson v. Skrupa, 372 U. S. 726, 729, 730 (1963?)
• "The doctrine that prevailed in Lochner, Coppage, Adkins, Burns, and like cases -- that due process authorizes courts to hold laws unconstitutional when they believe the legislature has acted unwisely -- has long since been discarded." erguson v. Skrupa, 372 U. S. 726, 729, 730
• The truth is that a teacher of kindergarten, grammar school, or high school pupils no more carries into a school with him a complete right to freedom of speech and expression than an anti-Catholic or anti-Semite carries with him a complete freedom of speech and religion into a Catholic church or Jewish synagogue. Cox v. Louisiana, 379 U. S. 536, 555; Adderley v. Florida, 385 U. S. 39.
• [argument re: freedom of assembly in greek letter frats prohibited and upheld Waugh v. Mississippi University, 237 U. S. 589, 596-597 is equivalent]
• the Court should accord Iowa educational institutions the same right to determine for themselves to what extent free expression should be allowed in its schools

Harlan dissent

• StrictScrutiny is not required.
• [Detailed Reasoning]
• school officials should be accorded the widest authority in maintaining discipline and good order in their institutions.
• cast upon those complaining the burden of showing that a particular school measure was motivated by other than legitimate school concerns
• nothing in this record which impugns the good faith of respondents in promulgating the armband regulation