The Supreme Court’s decision in Morse v. Frederick, 551 US 393 (2007) can have a major impact on student disputes with their school over the exercise of free speech rights and disciplinary charges for student speech. If you have any such dispute, or you or your student face disciplinary charges of any other kind, retain the LLF National Law Firm’s premier Student Defense Team. We help hundreds of students nationwide with First Amendment issues, disciplinary defense, academic progress issues, and other student rights and matters. Call 888.535.3686 or use our contact form now to tell us about your case and to retain our highly qualified attorneys.
Why Consider the Common Law
The U.S. follows a common law tradition that it inherited from the old English common law. Case law, like the decision in Morse v. Frederick, has substantial sway in the American legal tradition. Our attorneys constantly research, analyze, cite, and rely on Supreme Court decisions and decisions of other courts to advance our student clients’ matters. Case decisions also affect your school district and school officials, whether they know it or not. The state education laws and state education board rules all take into account the impact of Supreme Court cases. Many of those state laws, rules, and procedures, for instance, are the direct or indirect result of Supreme Court guarantees of Fourteenth Amendment due process protections. Cases matter to your school treatment. School officials respect your rights because they know that you can enforce them in the courts. The common law is a dynamic and practical tool to ensure that your school treats you as it should, especially with respect to your constitutional, statutory, and regulatory rights. Courts don’t make laws, but courts enforce laws, and case decisions comprising the common law play a big role in that enforcement. Let us help you deploy the case law for its best effect on your school matter.
Why Value Supreme Court Education Law Cases
The Constitution is the supreme law of the land, over other federal law and over state law, too. Supreme Court decisions interpreting constitutional rights thus have the same supreme effect. No matter what a state school law, rule, policy, or procedure may provide, a Supreme Court decision interpreting your constitutional rights supersedes the state and local authority. What the Supreme Court says goes. That’s why our attorneys research, analyze, interpret, and apply Supreme Court decisions in the hundreds of matters in which we represent our student clients. That’s also why we are sharing this information about Morse v. Frederick and, on other web pages, sharing summaries of other key Supreme Court education law cases. We want you to understand your legal rights. We also want you to appreciate the knowledge and skill our attorneys have in education law matters. Contact us for a consultation, and you will learn more about how we can help you with your school matters.
The Facts of Morse v. Frederick
The facts of a case have a lot to do with where, when, and whether a school official, school district, state agency, or reviewing court will consider the court as controlling or advisory precedent when deciding your matter. If a Supreme Court case like Morse v. Frederick has facts just like or much like the facts of your own case, then the Supreme Court case’s outcome will more likely control your case’s outcome. No two situations are exactly alike. Your school matter will inevitably differ in some respects, indeed likely in many respects, from any Supreme Court case or other published case that might constitute controlling or guiding precedent in your matter. Consider the following summary of the facts in Morse v. Frederick, understanding that while your matter may look quite different, the Morse decision may nonetheless have a lot to say about your matter’s proper outcome.
In Morse v. Frederick, a high school principal and other school officials allowed students to assemble outside in front of the school to participate in a public celebration of the Olympic torch passing through the town in a parade. The principal and teachers supervised the students, considering the event to be a school assembly, celebrating the commitments, values, and instruction of the school. Yet a group of students unfurled a banner that read Bong Hits 4 Jesus, just as the parade and media cameras passed by the school assembly. The principal and others present interpreted the message to promote student use of marijuana, an illegal drug for minors, violating the school’s health, morals, and welfare commitment to discourage student drug use. The principal demanded that the students remove the banner. When one student objected, the principal removed the banner herself, directed the objecting student to her office inside the school, and suspended the student for ten days on the spot.
Your school matter or your student’s school matter may not involve an assembly, an outdoor parade, or a banner containing a message promoting drug use. Your school matter may instead involve free speech of a different tone or kind, promoting different social, political, ethical, philosophical, or religious views. Your school matter may be in a different type of forum, such as within a classroom, at a school-sponsored sporting or social event, or in a school newspaper. Those factual distinctions may not matter to the application of the law, rules, and principles that the Morse decision states or implies. Let us help you construe the Morse decision and other case law in your matter so that you know and get to enforce and enjoy your full legal rights.
Procedural Posture of Morse v. Frederick
The procedural posture of a case, meaning how it works its way through the courts, can also determine whether the case decision controls or influences the outcome of your matter. In Morse v. Frederick, the student whom the principal summarily suspended for ten days appealed his suspension to the district superintendent who upheld it but limited it to eight rather than the full ten days. The student then sued the principal and district school board in the local federal district court. The district court dismissed the student’s claim for lack of legal merit. The student appealed the dismissal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The federal appellate court reversed the district court’s dismissal, ruling in favor of the student while stating the principal had violated the student’s rights. The school defendants sought review in the Supreme Court. After briefing and argument, the Supreme Court reversed the federal appellate court, ruling that the principal and district had not violated the student’s rights.
This procedural posture is important in several respects. First, because the case reached the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court’s decision in the case controls the decisions of all lower federal courts. The Supreme Court should also consider its decision in Morse v. Frederick as precedent in its own future decisions, although shifting Supreme Court majorities have overruled the Supreme Court’s own precedent. Because the Supreme Court decided the case as a matter of federal law, on the student’s federal law claim, the Morse decision also controls state court decisions on the same federal law. Only a state court decision under state law would not have to account for the federal law Morse decision, if the state law differed from the federal law that Morse decided. We can determine in your matter whether Morse v. Frederick is controlling or advisory authority, once you retain us to pursue and enforce your rights.
Legal Claims and Defenses in Morse v. Frederick
The legal claims and defenses in a case also influence whether the case is controlling or advisory authority in new cases up for decision. If your case involves different legal claims and theories than the claims and theories the student asserted in Morse v. Frederick, then the case is likely to have little or no precedential effect in your case. If, instead, we raise the same claims in your case that the student raised in Morse v. Frederick, the Supreme Court decision in that case is likely to have greater influence on, or even control the outcome of your case. Morse v. Frederick involved the following legal claims and defenses.
First Amendment Claims in Morse v. Frederick
The primary claim that the student raised in Morse v. Frederick was that the principal and school district violated his First Amendment rights, applicable to the state-government defendants through the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process clause. The First Amendment prohibits Congress, and by implication other federal actors, from making any law abridging free speech rights. The First Amendment does not directly prohibit state actors, including public school principals, from abridging free speech. However, the Supreme Court has held that the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process clause, prohibiting state actors from depriving individuals of certain constitutional rights, incorporates the First Amendment free speech protections into protections against state actors.
The Supreme Court in Morse v. Frederick, though, disagreed with the student’s assertion of First and Fourteenth Amendment free speech rights. The Supreme Court instead held that the high school’s street assembly was a school function. The school thus had a legitimate and substantial interest in controlling student expression so as to promote instructional goals. The school also had a substantial interest in not having student expression attributed to the school, where the student expression undermined school commitments and values.
Qualified Immunity Defense in Morse v. Frederick
The Supreme Court declined to consider a second legal issue that Morse v. Frederick had raised. When the student sued the principal who removed his banner, the principal defended the lawsuit in part on the basis that she had qualified immunity. Generally, public officials who act within the course and scope of their official duties are not individually and personally liable for damages that may result. In those instances, one may sue the public agency, in this case, the school or school district, but not the public official, in this case, the principal. The district court found that although the principal had violated no First Amendment right, the principal had qualified immunity from the student’s damages claim even if she had violated the student’s rights. The federal appellate court reversed both district court holdings, finding that the principal had violated the student’s First Amendment rights while further finding that the principal had no qualified immunity. The federal appellate court held, consistent with established law, that because the principal had so obviously violated the student’s First Amendment rights, as no reasonable school administrator could disagree, the principal had lost her qualified immunity.
The Supreme Court’s majority opinion did not reach the qualified immunity issue. After the Supreme Court decided that the principal had not violated the student’s First Amendment right, the Supreme Court reasoned that it did not need to reach and decide the qualified immunity issue. Interestingly, the Supreme Court dissenting opinion in Morse would have found a First Amendment violation but also found that the principal had qualified immunity. Ultimately, though, the Supreme Court’s decision in Morse has no controlling precedential value on qualified immunity.
Academic Administrative Versus Court Procedures
Consider again, for a moment, the potential impact of the Morse v. Frederick decision on your school matter. You may never come close to filing a federal court lawsuit. Don’t think, though, that Morse v. Frederick, therefore, has no precedential value in your school matter. School matters are usually resolve through school administrative procedures. Recall, for instance, that the student in Morse appealed his suspension to the local school district board. That appeal was an administrative appeal, not a court matter. Nearly all student disputes over school discipline resolve in such administrative proceedings. When our attorneys appear in a school matter for a student client, we typically invoke the school’s formal administrative procedures, while advocating and negotiating informally with school and district officials.
Although our attorneys are well qualified to sue schools and their officials to enforce student rights, we don’t usually need to do so. Instead, we can advocate case law like the Morse v. Frederick decision both in the school administrative proceeding and in informal communications and negotiations with school officials. Case law like Morse v. Frederick can be just as convincing in administrative proceedings and informal communications as it can be in court proceedings. So, yes, Morse v. Frederick involved federal court litigation. But, no, its effect is not limited to federal court lawsuits. We can advocate Morse v. Frederick and other Supreme Court decisions directly with school officials.
We also have the considerable academic administrative law knowledge, skills, and experience to be strategic and effective in your school representation. Because the vast majority of student issues resolve in school administrative procedures without reaching court, you need attorney representation with administrative knowledge, skills, and experience. Criminal and civil court laws, rules, and procedures differ from administrative law, rules, and procedures. We focus our practice on school law and proceedings. Your local criminal defense counsel and civil litigation attorneys do not generally share that niche focus. They may be entirely or largely unqualified to represent you in your school matters. Let us do so. Your education or your student’s education is worth protecting.
Holding of Morse v. Frederick
Attorneys and judges tend to look for, draw, and apply case holdings from Supreme Court decisions and other decisions of note. A case holding is not just the decision’s reasoning nor just the decision’s facts, claims, or outcome. A case holding is instead a combination of all those things, facts, claims, reasoning, and outcomes, into a useful rule or principle to apply in other cases. Judges and lawyers can disagree about what a case holds. Those disagreements are crucial to the development, application, and adjustment of the common law. We would be worse off, not better off, without those disagreements. Thus, if someone says that the holding in a certain case like Morse v. Frederick dictates the outcome of your school matter, don’t be so sure. Let us do the analysis, interpretation, application, and advocacy on your behalf. Don’t accept the school’s word for it when the school and its officials have conflicts of interest in trying to advise you of your legal rights.
That said, the holding or holdings of Morse v. Frederick may include that school officials have the authority to limit student expression of views that contradict legitimate and substantial school educational goals and expression that attributes views, values, or commitments to the school contrary to the school’s legitimate views, values, and commitments when that expression occurs in a school assembly or other instructional setting. A corollary holding of Morse v. Frederick is that school officials may discipline students who do not respect a school official’s lawful exercise of that right to control student expression to those ends in those settings.
The holdings you just read are a mindful or mouthful. Let’s take them apart a little. Morse v. Frederick is a case about the authority of school officials to limit student expression. Of course, the flip side is also true. Morse v. Frederick is also a case about the scope of student free speech in a school setting. From the school officials side of the equation, Morse v. Frederick teaches that school officials may act to limit student speech and to discipline students to carry out their lawful instructional authority in school activities. From the student side of the equation, Morse v. Frederick teaches that although students have free speech rights in school, they have fewer speech rights, the more the setting involves a school activity, and the more the school has an important educational goal to reasonably advance by limiting expression.
Quotes from Morse v. Frederick
Judges and lawyers don’t just rely on case holdings when using case decisions to advocate or justify decisions in new cases. They also take excerpts from cases to quote in briefs and case opinions, for the same advocacy, explanation, and justification purposes. Supreme Court opinions tend to be especially quotable, not just because they finally and firmly decide important federal issues and control lower federal court cases, but also because of the generally higher quality of the Supreme Court’s deliberations, reasoning, and writing. Our attorneys have a treasure trove of such writings to quote in our advocacy for our student clients. Chief Justice John Roberts’ majority opinion in Morse v. Frederick is no exception. Some of its pithier quotes include:
- “students do not ‘shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate’”;
- “schools may take steps to safeguard those entrusted to their care from speech that can reasonably be regarded as encouraging illegal drug use”;
- “the constitutional rights of students in public school are not automatically coextensive with the rights of adults in other settings”;
- “deterring drug use by schoolchildren is an “important—indeed, perhaps compelling” interest”; and
- “School principals have a difficult job, and a vitally important one. When Frederick suddenly and unexpectedly unfurled his banner, Morse had to decide to act—or not act—on the spot.”
Premier Student Defense Attorneys Available
Your school matter or your student’s school matter may be profoundly important on several levels. The outcome of your matter may, first of all, affect your ability or your student’s ability to persevere in the school program toward graduation. Discipline can result in school suspension and dismissal, but even lesser discipline can result in the loss of school mentors, advisors, teacher support, honors, awards, sports and other privileges, and class standing. Those losses can affect college and university admissions and other opportunities. However, the reasonable exercise of free speech rights in the school setting can also be profoundly important for autonomy and expression purposes. If you or your student face school policy restrictions affecting free speech rights or disciplinary charges over the exercise of free speech rights, retain the LLF National Law Firm’s premier Student Defense Team. Call 888.535.3686 or use our contact form now to tell us about your matters and to retain our highly qualified attorneys for your best outcome to those matters.