Reading Notes

Essential Supreme Court Decisions: Summaries of leading cases in U.S. Constitutional law (2010) 
by John R. Vile. 15th Edition. ISBN: 978-1-4422-0384-6.

Case: Morse v. Frederick, 551 U.S. 393 127 S. Ct. 2618; 168 L. Ed. 2d 290 (2007)
p309

"Joseph Frederick, a high school senior, was suspended after displaying a fourteen-foot banner saying "BONG HITS 4 JESUS" at an Olympic Torch Relay that passed by his school. The District Court upheld the principal's action, but the Ninth Circuit found that it violated the First Amendment."

On January 23, 2002, students and staff at Juneau-Douglas High School in Alaska were permitted to leave classes^[5] to watch the Olympic Torch pass by. Joseph Frederick, who was late for school that day, joined some friends on the sidewalk across from the high school, off school grounds.^[6] Frederick and his friends waited for the television cameras so they could unfurl a banner reading "BONG HiTS 4 JESUS". Frederick was quoted as saying he'd first seen the phrase on a snowboard sticker.^[7] When they displayed the banner, then-principal Deborah Morse ran across the street and seized it.
- Wikipedia on Morse v. Frederick

Now in a museum in Washington, D.C.
Take it down! No free speech.

Supreme Court ruled the kid didn't have the right to fly his Jesus flag.

"C.J. Roberts (5.5 to 3.5). This case clearly involves school speech, but the message on Frederick's banner is cryptic. The principal could reasonably suppress the banner on the basis that it advocated illegal drug use. Tinker v Des Moines established that students and teachers do not lose all First Amendment rights, but subsequent cases establish that these rights are not coextensive with those of adults, and Tinker's focus on "substantial disruption" is not the exclusive consideration, as Bethel v. Fraser (1986) and Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier (1988) established. Drug abuse is especially rampant and dangerous among school students and is furthered by peer pressure, which school authorities have the right to resist."

J. Thomas, J. Alito, and J. Breyer consented.

Comment: First Amendment free speech rights are all-inclusive only if you're talking in your own house and no one can hear you. Any place it matters, a school, the office place, in public... you can't just say whatever you want without facing consequences. This case established that even when not on school grounds, but while at a school supervised event, a student is not permitted to display banners to promote illegal drug use, no matter how stupidly it is worded.

J. Stevens dissented.

"The principal should be given qualified immunity, but 'the First Amendment protects student speech if the message itself neither violates a permissible rule nor expressly advocates conduct that is illegal and harmful to students.' The banner was simply nonsensical, and attempts to carve out an exception limiting speech advocating drug use is a form of prohibited viewpoint discrimination. 'Although this case began with a silly, nonsensical banner, it ends with the Court inventing out of whole cloth a special First Amendment rule permitting the censorship of any student speech that mentions drugs, at least so long as someone could perceive that speech to contain a latent pro-drug message.'
"

Comment: Come on Stevens. That kid was obviously taking bong hits for Jebus and thought it was cool.