No, it’s not a strawman at all. Public schools and their officials are considered government agencies and state actors and therefore these concepts are indeed applicable. Now, of course, it has been considered a reasonable exemption to restrict some speech on campus but it’s not cut and dried and definitely shouldn’t depend on a subjective and nebulous standard of so-called offense.
It’s definitely a strawman. You mention freedom of press, association, speech, all of which are curtailed at school. Students just don’t have “fundamental liberty” while they’re at school.
It would be a strawman if there were no relevance. But the relevance is that courts have held that public schools and universities are part of the government and must respect rights.
So even though there isn’t an absolute freedom of speech at primary and secondary level the protections are still pretty strong. Where the actual line is has not been decided and that is why the policies are brought to the courts to be decided now isn’t it? Unfortunately, the argument being used is that it can be disruptive. Well, that sounds like enabling a Heckler’s Veto to me and that’s not the appropriate way to deal with speech.
Being involved in any way with public school policy has to be one of the worst jobs imaginable. You suspend a student who causes an uproar because they walked into school with a shirt that says “Eradicate the White Race” and someone stands up and says, “Hey now, we can’t give into the heckler’s veto.” All you want to do is teach kids and you have to deal with this nonsense. There is literally nothing school administrators can do that won’t be criticized.
I’d be advocating for school uniforms, just to avoid this sort of nonsense.
It’s a strawman because you used it as yet another excuse to excoriate some fictional woke mob by generalizing the specific case of what’s allowed in a school setting.
ETA: And a heckler’s veto, whether you like it or not, is specifically allowed in a school setting – things that just cause a disruption are disallowed, right?
Johnny_Bravo and others have already laid out all the ways that free speech is curtailed in a school setting, so your argument seems to be utterly groundless.
You’re welcome! Thank you for the opportunity to look up some of these court cases. I found the Missouri Law Review paper (“Silencing the Rebel Yell”) to be very interesting and informative.
I’m not sure what you’re quoting here, but students certainly do not shed their constitutional rights when the enter the schoolhouse gate. As noted by many here, it’s murky. Schools have been given more authority to curtail these rights than other governmental actors (and more than I think is justified).
The confederate flag is rightly seen by most as a repulsive symbol of white supremacy. As a civil libertarian, I’m not comfortable suppressing unpopular (and repulsive) speech. However, if the school thinks a bunny logo or Joe Camel can be banned, (both of which seem like a stretch) then prohibiting this flag is a no brainer.
That’s what I was quoting. The person I was responding to.
You have shown that schools can, in most circuits, ban the CF due to its nature as a hate symbol. What continues to trouble me is that schools districts appear to be given strong discretion in deciding what speech, including political speech, they can place a prior restraint on. To take a real life example, it seems unlikely that the Tinker decision would be decided in the same way today by many of the circuits you have provided case law for. I also am concerned about districts using this discretion in inappropriate ways. See this school district in Oregon. Oregon School Board Faces Backlash After Banning Black Lives Matter And Pride Flags : NPR
Hopefully, you’ll find some case law that will tell me that I am worried about nothing.
The confederate flag is a symbol of hate. Black Lives Matter and Pride flags are not symbols of hate.
It’s not that hard to draw a distinction, really.
That’s the insidiousness of conservative bothsideism. They’re reframing the conversation as, “if you can ban things that offend you, we can ban things that offend us.” It’s not about being offended. It’s about being offended by hate speech and hate symbology.
That’s why it’s important to push back hard against people, even well-meaning people, who don’t want to see the issue in black and white. It is black and white.
The Confederate Flag is a hate symbol. It has no place in public schools.
The Pride Flag is not a hate symbol. It has no place in conversations about the Confederate Flag.
Absolutely not. Otherwise it would be settled case law and it isn’t. Maybe it will be in 10-20 years but at the moment courts have ruled each way and ultimately the courts’ judgement based upon the principles of freedom of speech are what matters. Merely asserting that someone is offended isn’t compelling. There has to be more than mere offense in order for the government to restrict rights.
I do concede that a certain level of control in a secondary/primary school is completely justified. Where that line is to be drawn is of course subject to debate.
I’d say it’s not about being offended at all. It’s about being threatened.
Pretty much anyone can be offended by anything anymore. A conservative Christian might be offended by a Pride shirt because they think homosexuality is a sin. But that homosexuality doesn’t threaten them in any tangible way.
A confederate flag threatens Blacks in an extremely tangible, historically provable way. Even if there isn’t a single Black student in the school, the flag threatens a return to a terrifying era of our history – i.e., it threatens everyone.
Aw, c’mon. How is a flag that was designed to represent an organized effort to mass-murder Americans who might end slavery, and then resurrected by terrorist groups wanting to quell political activism by Black Americans, and then resurrected again by white supremacists who didn’t want racial equality, a threat to anyone?
Year ago I posited that there were three groups that displayed the flag (outside of a strictly educational environment), with a lot of overlap among the groups:
- Racists
- Assholes
- Ignoramuses
After some debate, I was convinced that there was a fourth group:
4) Lunatics
It’s been years, and nobody’s convincingly suggested a fifth group.
Where would you draw it in regards to depictions of the Playboy bunny, or of a can of beer?
Quoted for truth.
Or the phrase “get high”? This was an incident from my own childhood and the rest of the student’s John Denver shirt was obscured.
I always thought it made identifying the racists easier, and yes, people do fly that flag in upstate NY. Now it can be kind of a guessing game as to who is racist. I never really found it offensive, but it was never flown on any government buildings or public land up here.
I do agree that flag should not be flown on any government building or public land, I can see how that would be offensive.
I’d love to see display of the Confederate flag or any other symbols of treason be treated as strict liability crimes. Display it, go to jail, no extenuating circumstances.
Sounds like an excellent way to make sure the flag and the sentiments behind it increase in popularity.