School Speech Takes A Hit
Now, Ambiguous Messages Can Be Sanctioned
Chief Justice John Roberts says “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” can “reasonably be viewed” as promoting illegal drug use. Yes, but the phrase can reasonably be viewed as nonsense.
The ambiguity alone should have generated second thoughts in the U.S. Supreme Court, which on Monday ruled that schools could punish the student whose core message — and the fact that he had a message at all — is still in dispute.
In 2002, Alaska high-school student Joseph Frederick joined a school-sanctioned viewing of an Olympic-torch procession. It was then that he unfurled a 14-foot banner that said “Bong Hits 4 Jesus.” Frederick said it was a publicity stunt, a way to get on TV. The principal seized the banner and booted the kid from school for 10 days.
Frederick sued, arguing that his First Amendment rights were abridged. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth District agreed with the student, and on Monday the case was settled by the Supreme Court.
The high court’s majority held that Frederick’s message could be viewed either as an imperative or as a celebration: i.e., either “take bong hits” or “bong hits are good.” In either case, the court ruled, the school district was within its rights to punish pro-drug prattle.
Frederick himself says the message had no real meaning, but rather had only a purpose — drawing the cameras’ gaze. Even the court’s majority concedes this point: “The message on Frederick’s banner is cryptic. It is no doubt offensive to some, perhaps amusing to others. To still others, it probably means nothing at all.”
But while admitting that the meaning was disputable, the court held that the message was punishable. “Gibberish is surely a possible interpretation of the words on the banner, but it is not the only one, and dismissing the banner as meaningless ignores its undeniable reference to illegal drugs.”
Monday’s ruling was yet another retreat from the 1969 landmark case Tinker v. Des Moines School District. In that case, a group of students wore black armbands in protest of the Vietnam War. That non-disruptive form of political speech was at the very heart of the purpose of the First Amendment.
How far we’ve come. In 1969, the court held that students do not shed their constitutional rights at the schoolyard gate. Today’s court continues its retreat from that precedent. And Justice Clarence Thomas propounds the radical view that “the Constitution does not afford students a right to free speech in public schools.”
Thank goodness for Justice John Paul Stevens, whose stinging dissent dissected the majority’s disjointed reasoning. Stevens readily conceded the majority’s major premises: that students do not enjoy full, adult free-speech rights and that illegal drug use is dangerous.
“But it is a gross non sequitur to draw from these two unremarkable propositions the remarkable conclusion that the school may suppress student speech that was never meant to persuade anyone to do anything,” Stevens wrote.
The danger in the “Bong Hits” ruling lies partly in its ambiguity. If schools can punish students for ambiguous messages that make reference to illegal drugs, could they punish a student whose banner read, “What Would Jesus Smoke?”
What if a student wore a T-shirt bearing the title “Reefer Madness”? Again, the message would be ambiguous. It could be an homage to the propaganda film’s intent, or it could be a savagely satirical reference. The Supreme Court says the interpretation most unfavorable to the student can be the basis for discipline.
That’s not reasonable, and it’s no way to teach students the value of civic engagement.
Clint Talbot for the editorial board of The Daily Camera.
© 2007 The Daily Camera
can i listen to ozzie’s sweet leaf on my ipod while on lunch break?
So now it’s illegal to talk about drugs? To even make a two word mention of them?
How do you ever expect to teach kids about drugs if they ‘dare not speak their name’? This ruling shows the Roberts Court’s complete disregard for individual rights, their partisan, sectarian prejudice, their complete corruption. Taken in conjunction with the other two rulings yesterday, that blew a hole in the firewall between Church and State and affirmed CORPORATIONS unfettered freedom of speech, right up through election day, they bode very ill for our future.
Please forgive the length. The Supreme Court had my stomach in knots all day yesterday.
The Supreme Court is putting this nation in jeopardy. I have long joked that the Bush family are members of the Comintern (are any of you old enough for that one?), intentionally driving the globe toward a people’s revolution. That, in fact, they are PAINED by their own policies, but know it to be the only way to bring the early relief of a worker’s uprising. Now, the Supreme Court has joined ranks with the Bush family.
In a 5-4 decision, the Court decided yesterday that it could defeat the Endangered Species Act by a thousand cuts. It subverted the law by adding language that did not exist in the original statute, relying on we poor lay people not to read the law. The Supreme Court has subverted the intent and language of the Endangered Species Act, putting first the Clean Water Act in consideration of Federal Agencies. While a battle between Endangered Species and Clean Water seems reasonable on the surface, it is not a clear picture of what has just moved beneath the surface. The Clean Water Act allows the Federal Government to devolve decisions to STATE agencies, which may then proceed with development activities WITHOUT interference on by the restrictions of the ESA. In essence, the Endangered Species Act has been turned to dust in the name of unrestrained development.
The ESA was intended to take precedence over all other law, as displayed in the Court’s 1973 decision on the Snail Darter. The law was written at a time when grass roots movements were putting pressure on Congress to recognize the value of the environment and to restrain corporate greed. The law was a reflection of the times and, though times have changed, the law is not one that Congress has been able to overturn because the public is, in spite of what the mass media might lead you to believe, an environmentally concerned public. With lobbyists unable to get the job done through Congress, it has fallen to the highest Court to write the law. A law of which there is no review. By leaving the actual statute on the books, but making an end run around it, the Court has allowed developers a means to further pillage our environment without restraint while leaving no room for popular outrage. Typically, when changes such as this come before Congress, popular resistance rears its ugly head and stops Congress from selling out our environment to the highest bidders. But the Court has subverted that will by CREATING law from the Bench, where there is no public review. We cannot vote the Justices out of office. We cannot call them before they hand down their decision.
The Court IS, in fact, making, rather than ruling ON, law this term. This is not the first case where it has ignored the precedence and statutes on hand to create a new law that jibes with the extreme conservatism and pro-corporate slant of the Roberts Court.
In another decision earlier this month, the Court upheld a Washington state law that restricts the use of Union Dues for political purposes. The law permits Union Dues to be be used in political campaigns ONLY if the membership of the Union is polled and agrees with the choices of the Union. It is not the law that I question so much as the fact that NO SUCH BEHAVIOR is required for Corporate donations. Where corporations required to also poll THEIR membership (stockholders) and support only those candidates approved by these stockholders, perhaps the Court’s ruling would not smack so of Corporate favoritism. It is an interesting distinction that labor, by virtue of being a restraint on the power of capital, should have its voice quashed by the Court, while, at the same time, the Court is assaulting the McCain-Feingold law. While not declaring the law unconstitutional, for which reason 3 of the 5 majority justices would not sign the majority opinion, it does gut the law so significantly as to make it nearly irrelevant. The attempt to put shackles on soft money spending by corporations has been defeated, proving that this Court truly stands for the One Dollar, One Vote ethic so repulsive to the notion of democracy. This attack on McCain-Feingold, combined with the restriction on Union spending on campaigns, means that Corporate American can speak with a billion dollar voice while the rest of us are restricted to five dollars a pop. It is simply impossible for private citizens to compete with the media muscle of Corporate America which not only has the money to dominate the purchase of air time, but effectively OWNS the PUBLIC airwaves besides. The choices that network television stations have made in refusing to run advertisements that it considers “controversial” even from those willing to pay the same prices as any other advertiser shows that the financial divide in having one’s voice heard is one that simply CANNOT be crossed, even for those who gather the funds for the outrageous toll. The Court is simply adding insult to injury with its joint decisions, speaking its opinion that those of us who work for a living do not count.
As if this were not enough, the Court has also said that the people may not bring suit against the Bush Administration for the use of tax payer dollars to support his Faith-Based initiatives. It was a 5-4 decision, with the lunatics lining up as a majority. For reasons beyond the comprehension of anyone who has ever read the Constitution, the Court ruled that the restrictions on religion were on the legislative branch, and that the executive was fine to use money from the GENERAL fund to support a given religion. Apparently, there is no separation of Church and State in the presidential palace and we begin to see that Cheney’s ill-founded logic on exemptions is not a one-man delusion. As we head into a corporate theocracy, where women have no rights over their own bodies and corporations are the only “people” deemed worthy of political voice, it should be no surprise that we also are abolishing the barriers of Church and State. What is fantastic is that there is any pretense to LAW in these decisions. While the legalize mentioned earlier is a barrier to understanding of the law, the matter of Church and State cannot by simpler. Apparently, however, this law applies EXCEPT in the highest office in the land, where we permit all law to meld into whimsy at the discretion of the Emperor. The Court has chosen to read the First Amendment to mean that the separation of Church and State applies ONLY to Congress, whereas the amendment states it thus, because the framers of the Constitution and the dissenters in the Bill of Rights had NEITHER any idea of the imperial office the presidency would become. They imagined the POWER to reside in the legislative branch, which said branch seems to have forgotten.
While the Court also ruled that Free Speech could be limited in matters so obviously outrageous as the phrase, “Bong hits 4 Jesus,” it is not clear at what point this Free Speech will also be limited on matters of religion, wherein it shall be found that Jesus is so OBVIOUSLY the one and only true savior, and all suggestions to the contrary are not FREE SPEECH, but un-patriotic blasphemy requiring a lengthy stay in the secret prison of the government’s (or appropriate Church leader’s) choosing.
It would seem there is no further point to putting matters before the Supreme Court as there is a simple formula for determining outcomes. Money trumps all. Free Speech means you are free to speak the government line. Development is always more important than the environment. Corporations are not responsible for ANY wrong-doing, intentional or not. We are a Fundamentalist Christian nation, subject to Biblical Law. Congress may pass what laws it likes, but anything that subverts the above is UNCONSTITUTIONAL. If there is any doubt, please refer back to ‘Money Trumps ALL.’
School freedom of speech started taking a hit over 15 years ago with “speech codes” prohibiting whole sections of freedoms of speech. Who can forget the 1993 case of the jewish student yelling “be quiet you water buffalos” to a group of sorority sisters who were disturbing his studies. Damn near got thrown out of school for it.This is nothing new.
“… dismissing the banner as meaningless ignores its undeniable reference to illegal drugs.”
I dont see ANY reference to illegal drugs in the phrase
“bong-hits-for-jesus”
….no pot, not cocaine, no heroin, no meth, NADA
Maybe the kid is suggesting smoking the sacrement, or pages of the bible, or even TOBACCO
Moses Kassandra
Thank-you for your well-written post. If only
all Americans would read it and understand it.
So maybe the kids meant “bong” like hit a bell that goes “bong bong” 4 Jesus. The supreme court Supreme court, excluding the minority opinion, are out to dismantle all thats left of the “New Deal” and enslave us to the corporations.
God (or Jesus) the whole damn thing is so sick.
moses the government as a whole is controlled by corperations, and is doing everything possible to remove power from the people. WHat they don’t know, because they lack the ability to think past 10 minutes of their actions, is that it will come back to haunt them 10 fold.
THE supreme court decision in the frederick case takes an ambiguous statement on a banner,interprets it as a pro-drug statement as a pretext for limiting free speech.its no accident that the roberts court took this case after the ninth circuit found for the young man.the war on drugs is a huge business in this society.there are gobs of money and oodles of votes at stake.on the other hand,the first amendment is a pesky abstraction,which can be preempted if one of us peasants uses a word or phrase,however unintentionally ,which offends the sensitivities or the purposes of the powers that be.not just a little scary.
Message to tarests:
Please don’t blow up the President and the Congress, but if you must, you may as well include the Supremes.
The quarantee of freedom of speech was intended to be used by “grown-ups” willing to sacrifice their “lives, fortunes and sacred honor” to keep their government under control not by some pimply-faced kid who needs to show the world that he hasn’t been properly socialized.
HighLady: Freedom of speech covers everything, from “Bong Hits” to “Heil Hitler”, not just what you or the current supremes would like it to cover. Are you quoting from some document (it’s certainly not the US Constitution) in your post or just emphasizing your pet phrases?
Everyone should read Moses’ exceptional, heartfelt and shaken post. This supreme court is the canary in the coal mine of the destruction of democracy and the rise of corporate fascism in the USA. As long as it lives, America is dead. This week’s decisions were more in the sickening legacy of these bought and paid for political hacks. Every 5-4 ruling goes in favor of the corporate persona; every 5-4 decision goes against individual rights; every 5-4 decision is so tortured as the make the law and the Constitution irrelevant. Talk about bad die rolls - eight years and Clinton didn’t get a single appointment, while Bush the Unlawful gets to ram two young fascists through in five. Notice how he followed the Reagan Republican trend of appointing Catholics to the court - guaranteed votes for the eventual dismantling of Roe v Wade. Bush’s kind universally equates Catholics with devil worshippers, but good Catholics apparently have their uses in the America of corporate fascism.
So now Justice Thomas declares its a law that the right to free speech doesn’t cover a student in a school? Since when do these ’supreme’ justices extend their power to making up rules that are the exception to the Constitution? What if the aforementioned student stated on his banner ” light up for Bush”?