I have been arguing (quite obviously ineffectively) that the CF is bad, and can be disruptive, but that there hasn’t been a Court ruling, or even an argument made by schools that it is inherently disruptive. Absent that, making a prior restraint on speech, even in a school, is unlikely to be upheld by courts. I am also arguing that bans on speech, even where, as here, they have the best of intentions, should not be taken lightly.
I have been asked to reply to countless hypotheticals. Let me ask one. Suppose a state bans the CF in schools. Would you then agree to a ban of a Proud Boys hat? Just to be clear, I am not saying they are equivalent.
ISTM, as other posters have noted, that the school is already willing to be quite sweeping in its bans on speech, according to the cited rules in the OP:
It’s okay to prohibit wholesale any “speech” that might be interpreted as, say, conveying a sexual innuendo or depicting an alcoholic beverage, but somehow banning the Confederate flag is a bridge too far? That doesn’t seem very consistent or convincing.
Categories of speech that are given lesser or no protection by the First Amendment (and therefore may be restricted) include obscenity, fraud, child pornography, speech integral to illegal conduct, speech that incites imminent lawless action, speech that violates intellectual property law, true threats, and commercial speech such as advertising.
I have no problem with a school banning a shirt with a beer company advertised. It would be a very different thing to ban a shirt advocating for the lowering of the drinking age. This is not my standard, it’s the Supreme Court’s. If you do not find it convincing, feel free to take it up with them.
Offense depends on the perception of the viewer. Symbols don’t have intrinsic meanings. Some folks like the flag for a variety of reasons and their reasoning is as valid as yours. Now when I was going to school, we did wargames and had books on history and those games and books had all sorts of insignia and flags in them and not once did it cause a disturbance. But those were times before performative outrage, to paraphrase a current NY Times article, and social media made such outrage useful.
No, their reasoning isn’t valid on any level. The Confederate Battle Flag in its modern use celebrates the myth of the “Lost Cause” and is widely understood to be a symbol of racism and white supremacy and is promoted by the KKK to this day. The people who like it like it because it is a symbol of these things. Its a racist flag full stop.
Yeah, octopus, you’re not actually the most credible spokesperson for the position of “reasonable people can have valid reasons for disagreeing about a particular choice of speech”.
Ha HA ha ha ha HAA! I can tell you never encountered anyone who, say, went to school wearing long hair (if male) or an antiwar or pro-Soviet Union symbol back before such practices became fashionable. People who had those experiences report that, contrary to your assertion, performative outrage abounded.
No it isn’t. Not every potential sexual innuendo or depiction of alcohol counts as advertising or obscenity or child pornography, for example.
The school’s dress code as quoted in the OP already includes very sweeping bans on various subjects of speech that don’t fall into the categories you cite as having limited First Amendment protection. So your attempt to argue that the school is just following a clear bright-line distinction between stuff that’s protected by the First Amendment and stuff that isn’t is not at all persuasive.
So, according to you, its no big deal to simply ban the Confederate Flag and just lump it in with the alcohol and tobacco bans? Great. Problem solved. Loads of school districts will be thrilled to hear it.
You do realize that schools have been repeatedly sued over the last few decades for banning Confederate imagery and have repeatedly been vindicated? Here’s part a ruling from Scott v. School Bd. of Alachua County. I bolded some bits that are relevant to the arguments you’ve been making.
After a careful analysis of Denno v. School Bd. of Volusia County,218 F.3d 1267 (11th Cir. 2000), Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Comm. School Dist.,393 U.S. 503, 89 S.Ct. 733, 21 L.Ed.2d 731 (1969) and Bethel School District v. Fraser,478 U.S. 675, 106 S.Ct. 3159, 92 L.Ed.2d 549 (1986), the Court concludes that school officials can appropriately censure students’ speech under either of the following two theories. First, from the Tinker case, school officials are on their most solid footing when they reasonably fear that certain speech is likely to “appreciably disrupt the appropriate discipline in the school.” Denno, 218 F.3d at 1271, citing Tinker,393 U.S. at 514, 89 S.Ct. 733. Second, from Fraser,even if disruption is not immediately likely, school officials are charged with the duty to “inculcate the habits and manners of civility as values conducive both to happiness and to the practice of self-government.” To do so, they must have the flexibility to control the tenor and contours of student speech within school walls or on school property, even if such speech does not result in a reasonable fear of immediate disruption.Denno, 218 F.3d at 1271. As the Supreme Court stated in Fraser:
Surely it is a highly appropriate function of public school education to prohibit the use of vulgar and offensive terms in public discourse. Indeed, the “fundamental values necessary to the maintenance of a democratic political system” disfavor the use of terms of debate highly offensive or highly threatening to others. Nothing in the Constitution prohibits the states from insisting that certain modes of expression are inappropriate and subject to sanctions. The inculcation of these values is truly the “work of the schools.”
Scott v. School Bd. of Alachua County , 324 F.3d 1246, 1248 (11th Cir. 2003)
In 2009, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit heard
for the first time a case challenging the constitutionality of a public school’s
ban on the display of Confederate flags.5 When the Eighth Circuit faced this
situation in B. WA. v. Farmington R- 7 School District (B. WA. v. Farming-
ton), it attempted to balance the competing interests of protecting students’
free speech rights and avoiding future disruption and danger to the learning
environment. In doing so, the court adhered to the reasoning established by
its sister circuits and set a precedent within the Eighth Circuit that shifts away from Tinker’s original protections to allow suppression of a particular mode of student political speech, even when that exact mode of expression has nev- er caused a disruption.
What do you mean by “no big deal”? It certainly wouldn’t be inconsistent with school rules that already ban “emblems, symbols, slogans or writings” conveying any form of “sexual innuendo”, or any depiction (not just advertisement) of tobacco or alcohol, or any unspecified source of “disruption or distraction to the educational process”.
Those restrictions are already much more draconian than simply excluding the non-First-Amendment-protected categories you listed previously, and could easily be read to imply a ban on Confederate flag insignia.
Probably, but loads of others probably will not. But surely you’re not advocating that we base our condemnation of offensive symbols on how many people will or won’t be “thrilled” by it, are you? Are schools only allowed to ban imagery that will be “no big deal” because nobody really cares one way or the other?
From Bethel v. Fraser, which was precedent cited in Scott v. Alachua:
“The determination of what manner of speech in the classroom or in school assembly is inappropriate properly rests with the school board. ” Bethel School Dist. No. 403 v. Fraser , 478 U.S. 675, 683 (1986)
Ad hominem is an actual logical fallacy. Attacking me personally has no impact on the fact that symbols don’t have intrinsic meaning and your opinion of a symbol’s meaning has no special weight.
But yes performative outrage is more and more an issue and is more of a problem than a random kid wearing any particular flag. Even a pro Soviet Union one.
Yes, and you evidently don’t understand what it is.
When I question your credibility as an advocate for a certain position based on your having supported a different position in the past, that’s not an ad hominem.
An ad hominem attack would be if I were disparaging your credibility on the basis of something that has nothing to do with your expressed opinions. E.g., something like “Of course octopus is wrong about this, because anyone who would choose a cephalopod as his avatar must be a nitwit!”
Your personal liking for cephalopods doesn’t have anything to do with the validity and consistency of your opinions on tolerating disagreement about symbolic speech. But your previously expressed opinion that signally failed to achieve tolerance for disagreement about symbolic speech does. Hence, my criticism of the inconsistency in your opinions is not an ad hominem attack.
If the best argument for tolerating the Confederate Battle Flag is that the Supreme Court has not issued a decision against it, then there are no good arguments for tolerating its display.
Yes, some folks like the Confederate Flag because they believe in the values it upholds (like white supremacy) and in their heritage as Southern whites (and their long history of persecution of black people).
Meanwhile some folks like the Taliban flag, because they agree that Islamic law should rule all aspects of society
I’m glad to know that Octopus finds this reasoning valid.
Nobody is saying you shouldn’t play war games. Using Nazi tanks in a game of Axis and Allies doesn’t imply you support the Nazi regime or the ideas it stood for.
Back to the OP: from a practical standpoint I’m not convinced that the dress code is sufficiently explicit to unambiguously allow banning of the Confederate flag without at least ensuring there’s a consensus view from the Principal and/or other key management people.
Which is not to say that you shouldn’t ask. There is certainly an argument to be made (as this thread demonstrates) that the Confederate flag has a negative effect on the school environment for some students. But I wouldn’t recommend taking a unilateral stand on it in Texas. A CYA approach is advised.
It is valid reasoning. That’s what fundamental liberty is. If freedom of religion, press, association, speech, protection of private property from being seized without compensation… well strike that last one… are to be more than farces then it’s necessary that exercises of those freedoms aren’t allowed only with the blessings of the mob.
This is good evidence that I had an insufficient understanding of the decisions in other Circuits away from a showing of actual disruption. I concede the point. Thank you for the information.
This reply is attacking a strawman. No one in this thread is saying it should be illegal to have a CF flying in front of your house. This is about what can be banned in a school setting.