SCOTUS CASE (Tinker v. Des Moines)

Respondent

Des Moines School Board

Petitioner

Tinkers

Decision/Majority Opinion

7-2 ruling. Students do not have to relinquish their rights upon entering an educational institution, as long as their speech was not posing a threat to the school safety or the rights of other students.

Constitutional Clause

Freedom of Speech

Dissent

Freedom of speech is not absolute. Schools are for the purpose of teaching content. School administrators should be able to maintain speech in order to keep order.

Respondent Argument

Respondent argued that the armbands could very well have cause a disruption in the school and thus interrupting the learning process. Also, since the subject of the kids' speech dealt with the controversial subject of Vietnam, the inflammatory nature of the "speech" might cause other kids to bully the Tinker's children. Also respondent argued that freedom of speech is not absolute and that schools function to teach curriculum, not to be breeding grounds for controversy. Respondent finally argued that by SCOTUS intervening and ruling against the board of education would be violating a power of the states to exercise their reserved power to create a school system.

What did the Tinker's protest resemble?

Symbolic Speech bc not all freedom of speech has to be spoken

Background/Facts

Tinker children (and other students) wore black armbands as a protest against the Vietnam War. The school board got wind of this beforehand and mandated that any child wearing the armband would be suspended from school because the board said wearing the armband would disrupt the learning process of other students. The Tinker parents sued the school board, as they said, violating their children's 1st amendment free-speech protections. The tinkers lost in the lower courts, so the Tinkers petition led SCOTUS to take the case on appeal.

Petitioner Argument

Tinkers argues that the school mandate violated their kids freedom of speech by punishing them for wearing the armbands as a protest against the Vietnam war. They also argued that schools should be a place for discourse about ideas and beliefs, and that the armbands did not disrupt the learning environment.