I’ve known 10 year olds I would trust with my life and alleged adults with professional careers who post on Internet web-based message boards whom I would not trust to water my plants.
School really is different than the outside world. There is an element of parenting involved. We would never restrict the freedom of one adult to tell another to go to hell, but we rightly restrict schoolchildren from saying that to each other.
It is reasonable for teachers to prevent emotional distress and undue distraction at school. Despite the first amendment, it is right for a teacher to try to prevent an eighth grader from telling a kindergartener that his mother is going to get sick and die next week. I believe it is similarly appropriate to restrict the kinds of topics that can be worn and depicted on clothing worn in the halls with those kindergarteners.
And in this case, it didn’t distract from anything. But even if it caused a mild interruption, that’s of no moment. A plane flying overhead does as much and no one’s advocating ground planes during school hours. Or when someone comes late to class. No one’s suggesting to expel those students outright.
This shirt didn’t materially interfere with the school; thus, the school’s proscription on it is constitutionally dubious.
No, we wrongly restrict schoolchildren from saying that to each other.
College students attend voluntarily (although you could make the argument that it is sufficiently necessary to obtain a degree … another argument, another time). Students in elementary, middle / jr-high, and high school for the most part have no choice. You therefore can’t make the argument that, in deciding to attend school, they accept an abridgment of their rights.
It would be reasonable to restrict schoolchildren from making slanderout statements or making threats, but “go to hell” ?
And, again, there’s nothing wrong with that shirt.
School’s are allowed to set dress codes. If controversial political topics violate the dress code then too damn bad. The first amendment doesn’t mean you have the right to say anything anywhere at any time. If you think it does it’s on you to provide a cite for that extreme interpretation.
I’m not so sure. I think even if a school adopted a comprehensive dress code, entirely innocent of a desire to suppress student speech, it still could not prevent students from wearing a Tinker-style armband. What the school would have to show is that the restriction (1) advances a significant state interest (and again, merely “avoiding controversial topics” does not meet this test) and (2) that alternative avenues are left open for speech.
Maybe if you had something like a weekly pan-school assembly, where students could address their peers on topics of their choosing, might such an armband prohibition be allowed. But I suspect that is even more hippie-dippy then letting the kids just wear a tee-shirt announcing their views, and so is less preferable to most who would support the dress code.
This is what I love about religious fanaticism: no matter how wrong they are, no matter how they’re shown how wrong they are; no matter how deceptive it’s requires to get to bigger “truth” of god, they don’t stop. They just keep going, and going, and going, and going, and going, and going, and going, and going, and going, and going, and going, and going, and they never shut the fuck up because after all, repetition makes it true, not reality.
Ms, no matter how much you proclaim “well, they could do this” and “they could do that” and “they might” and “it could be the case” to the “can it not possibly be true that” the fact is this area of law has been settled for many years. You have yet to make one reasonable argument on which your claim might be almost okay. Besides which is the case that none of what you’ve suggested bears any relationship to this case. It didn’t happen.
Kimmy, that’s because a code can’t merely be a sham. And even if their intent is content neutral, yet nevertheless restricts all expression of personal ideas, it must yield to the state.
I’ll respond thus: in the military, people wear uniforms. Wow, I feel better getting that off my chest. Or were you trying to contribute to this discussion?
Good point, I should’ve thought of Tinker. Yes, if they wanted to setup some kind of pro-life armband or lapel pin it likely could not be rejected, but having a graphic image is different.
I’m not even sure what the hell you are trying to say. Your rant about religion got in the way as it usually does when someone rants about religious belief for no apparent reason.
Schools can set dress codes. You find this a controversial statement? At my High School they made people change shirts with offensive graphics on them all the time.
So really I have to say, “What the hell are you even talking about?”
If a girl walked around fucking herself in the ass with a used dildo while blowing one of her teachers, would they be able to stop that?
If a dude was murdering some geek in the gym, would a teacher be able to stop that?
You bring up so many fucking points nowhere implied here that it’s ridiculous. It’s almost hard to believe that nearly 100% of the time your religious whackjob brethren try to push some shit in schools, THEY LOSE. Because your level of reasoning is about on par with theirs and courts routinely, even our very conservative justices, smack it down. Hell, you know it’s fucked up when Scalia can’t lie to save it.
I digress. How about this: you stay on topic, and I’ll stay on topic. Note, “what if she wore a short skirt and her vagina lips hung out?” isn’t on topic.
It has been stipulated all around that the school has some plenary authority to enforce a dress code. The limits of that power depend on the severity of the dress code. If the dress code unilaterally stifles free speech, and some alternative isn’t given, then it’s constitutionally infirm. Do keep up.
No, I am not the one who started frothing about how much they hate religious people. So really I should ask you if it’s so difficult for YOU to stay on topic?
Yes.
Yes.
See this is the part that makes no sense at all. What Scalia or religion have to do with me saying that schools have the right to set dress codes is beyond me.
Umm ok.
I get that, but that’s not the point. As Kimmy_Gibbler who is not prone to insane rants filled with non-sequiturs about his chosen hate group pointed out in regards to Tinker vs Des Moines, they cannot ban something based solely on the political content, but that’s not what happened here. They banned it because of it’s graphical nature, and not because of its message. If the Pro-Life movement wanted to create a chartreuse armband then the school district would have nothing to say about it, and if they did it would be a speech issue, but since that’s not what happened, then it’s only kind of relevant. For instance, do you think they would ban a shirt protesting the Iraq war that showed a baby that had been blown apart by a hand grenade?
Try to keep up. (It’ll be easier if you keep the insane barely intelligible ranting to a minimum, you’ll have more time to read what other people have written and compose your response.)
*What I find fascinating about your particular pathos here is that you’d think if I were the religious fanatic you want me to be I’d be up in arms about the Liberal schools trying to oppress her for her Pro-Life views.
Your argument is essentially that if she chose to wear an armband to represent her points, she’d be okay. Sure. But she’s equally free to choose another way to express. What she wore isn’t objectively profane, or obscene. Some people might think it is, but that’s never been the test. The test isn’t if someone might take offense, or be upset, or angry, or offended. Undoubtedly someone somewhere will be all of that over something. It isn’t relevant. You keep changing the standards.
What standard would you delineate such that x is allowed and y isn’t?
The graphical nature, and whether or not it is deemed to be obscene, which is of course highly subjective. I can see why such a shirt might be disturbing to the point of being distracting. Generally in my school the standard was whether or not the image was distracting, it seems to me that is the standard being applied here. The only reason that this made the news at all is because of the political nature of the message.
When they asked the nice young metalhead wearing this NSFW T-shirt with it’s political message to take his shirt off, for some inexplicable reason it never made the news or warranted a debate on the SDMB.
The relevant question would be whether or not they’d ask her to remove a shirt that said, “It’s a Child not a Choice.”, with no graphics.
No, the relevant isn’t if she could go out of her way to change the message she wanted to convey in a way that would agreeable to her, but not her preferred way. Of course there are other ways she can make the same point. The fact that she might be allowed to come to school when no one is there and say what she really wanted to say doesn’t make it okay to prevent her today from saying it.
The question isn’t if otherwise legally free speech is okay to be abridged specifically (in this case, it wasn’t general, it was specific) so long as they can later on still get to say almost the same thing. She chose to speak on that day by wearing an unoffensive shirt. Indeed, like what? three people here have said that it’s offensive. The school hasn’t provided a single legal reason that her shirt isn’t allowed.
I’m curious about that guy’s shirt you brought up: how come you didn’t start a thread on it? I’m sure many people would have argued that that shirt isn’t free speech in a school because it’s intentionally offensive, and it’s obscene as well as gratuitous.
The point is the ‘distracting’ part. That’s generally the standard by which schools enforce dress codes. They make people change their shirts on a daily basis in High Schools across the country, and smartasses try to pull free-speech about it on a daily basis. I don’t have a copy of the student handbook for that school handy, but if it’s anything like mine was it has a paragraph on dress codes and likely uses the word ‘distracting’ somewhere within it.
It isn’t just some distraction. You can read the relevant parts of the decision which I posted upthread. Just because a school promulgates some rule doesn’t end the discussion; the rule must be constitutionally permissible.
Yes, if they wanted to setup some kind of pro-life armband or lapel pin it likely could not be rejected, but having a graphic image is different.