It’s not about what parents want to explain. I’m speaking from the perspective as a former teacher, not a parent. The issue is simply preventing distractions in the classroom. Clothing with strident political messages is like a cell phone going off. It’s disruptive and obnoxious.
As to what gets restricted – it’s all up to the judgement of the school. If it’s disruptive or has the strong potential to be disruptive then take it off.
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Did I miss a headline that announced your appointment to the Supreme Court and the simultaneous death or resignation of the nine current justices?
You keep announcing your opinion of how things should be as though it were settled law.
Please provide a reliable cite showing that third trimester abortions are only performed for urgent health reasons.
Nope, 'fraid not - the Supreme Court makes that determination. Indeed, they already have.
They have ruled that schools may not restrict political speech unless it can be shown that this speech disrupts the educational mission of the school. Not “may” disrupt, does disrupt. Thus the burden of proof is on the school, to show how this T-shirt disrupted their educational mission.
I have seen no such proof, although I am open to evidence.
This is not a classroom, so I can do grown-up digressions.
You’re right about the 3rt trimester stuff and the percentages. It’s still a sort of “Ad” stretching it a bit.
How do you know it didn’t have genetic problems o was dead?
Abortion is a polarizing issue for adults. I double anyone pre-adolescence really cares about, much less understands, the issue. Kids care a heck of a lot more about sports, music, gaming consoles, my dad vs your dad, etc than about political issues.
This is a radically oversimplified statement of the doctrine.
Look, free speech law is notoriously indeterminate. There are a half-dozen factors: political vs. non-political speech, forum analysis, “low-value speech,” content-based vs. content-neutral, etc. When you put that complex, indeterminate body of law into the context of the schoolhouse, where the justices have significant disagreement over the application of individual rights, you’re bound to get a lot of disagreement about what the law is.
But there are a few principles which are pretty well-established. As even Roberts concedes in Morse:
Avoiding controversy, discomfort, or unpleasentness is insufficient. This actually derives from a longstanding rule in free speech called Heckler’s Veto. In short, you can’t alter the speech rights of a speaker because of how his audience might (often irrationally or improperly) react.
Restricting political speech because its content is disruptive is content-based discrimination, which is presumed to be unconstitutional and there are only narrow exceptions even in school. As Shodan correctly states, the school has to prove there will be disruption to its mission beyond mere controversy or discomfort. And, though not stated in Morse, I think the rest of the doctrine compels the conclusion that the disruption cannot be because of the content of the message unless the content runs counter to some aspect of the school’s educational mission aside from the likelihood of disruption.
A lot of parents politicize their kids early over the abortion issue. They don’t really know what they’re taking about, but that doesn’t stop them from running their mouths anyway. I had to squelch arguments about it in 5th and 6th grade classrooms. I know for a fact that 7th grade is not too early for a shirt like that to be disruptive.
Having said that, I would not tell the kid to change the shirt that day. I would just quietly talk to her after class and tell her not to wear it again. I wouldn’t want to call any public attention to her. It’s not her fault her parents are using her in such a gross and boorish manner.
Why don’t you provide a reliable cite showing that third trimester abortions are only performed for urgent health reasons and stop trying to shift the burden of proof? You’ve made an assertion - let’s see you back it up.
OK, then again - please show how this T-shirt actually disrupted the educational mission of the school.
What facts can you provide that show that this T-shirt actually disrupted the educational mission of the school?
I’m going to regret this, I really don’t know why I’m even bothering.
Yes, you don’t know me. Yes, therefore, to you I’m not a reliable cite.
I used to work for one of the two remaining doctors in America who perform third-trimester abortions, and in my time there, we never performed a third-trimester abortion without having the patient referred to us by her (outside) attending physician who had diagnosed a life-threatening condition or a severe and/or lethal genetic or physical abnormality in the fetus. We required diagnostic proof, from the diagnosing/referring physician (not the mother), and there WERE referrals that we refused because we did not feel the conditions were lethal or damaging enough to warrant an abortion.
Obviously, I cannot speak for every single third-trimester abortion in America, or the third-trimester abortions performed outside our office. But that was my personal experience, and these cases in our office were incredibly rare. I just wanted to offer a personal story to counteract the myth that women are waiting until the 39th week of their pregnancy to blithely say “oh, I changed my mind, I don’t want this baby” and finding doctors who are gleefully performing an abortion for them.
I am not sure if I fully agree with you here. Chaplinsky and the “fighting words” doctrine is essentially an endorsement of the Heckler’s Veto.
It listed categories of speech that everyone agreed could be banned, including…
It’s the audience reaction here that makes the speech not protected. It’s a crappy decision, but I don’t think it has ever been overturned. There hasn’t been a fighting words case upheld since, though…
You are back pedaling. First it was that the mother was in danger. Then it was just urgent medical reasons, now it’s just medical cause?
But the truth of it is that neither of you will ever have actual cites, because every effort to actual track abortion numbers and reasons gets shot down by pro-choicers.
When I worked at the above-mentioned abortion clinic, we voluntarily participated in a study by the Alan Guttmacher Institute and the NAF to track abortion numbers and reasons in certain demographic segments of our patients.
It doesn’t much matter what schools claim the law is. The fact is they claim something the people who actually make those decisions (the deciders?) say is otherwise.
When confronted with the school’s assertion of what the constitution says versus that which the courts say it is, the former always must yield to the latter.
General observation:
One may say that there isn’t an absolute right to free speech school. One would be correct. So too is there not an absolute right to free speech in the United States-at-large. And the test isn’t whether it could cause some disruption, but that it likely will cause substantial disruption.
The argument that some people might be distracted doesn’t somehow mean that it will materially affect the teaching in that school, or substantially disrupt the ends of the school, unless the ends of the school, of course, are at odds with the constitution. If that be the case, then it’s completely irrelevant what the school wants as it’s acting outside the law.
So, what you’re saying is that you, as the person in charge in the classroom, had the ability to steer the class back on task? That you were able to maintain order and get back to the teaching material? Why do you presume that the teachers in this other school here are less competent to do so than you? That must be the assumption because you’ve surely not provided a modicum of evidence that this shirt in this school substantially disrupted teaching, caused fights or anything of the like.
So, either we’re in the presence of the most persuasive teacher ever, or you just want to conflate the problem instead of analyzing what actually happened.
That’s true. What I’m saying is that the idea that a pre-teen student would fight for their “right to free speech” over a t-shirt all the way to the Supreme Court is laughable.
