The Supreme Court's decision in Tinker v Des Moines, 393 US 503 (1969) remains a controlling and influential case on school free speech, free expression, and discipline cases. If you or your minor student face those or other issues threatening school enrollment and privileges, retain the Lento Law Firm's premier Student Defense Team to advocate strategically and effectively for your best outcome. We help hundreds of students nationwide successfully resolve their school matters, preserving their education and reputation. Call 888.535.3686 or use our contact form now to tell us about your case and to retain our highly qualified lawyers.
The Common Law in School Cases
You may wonder what the effect of court decisions, like the Supreme Court's decision in Tinker v Des Moines, really is with respect to your school matter or your child's school matter. The common law, that great body of dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of school cases, means a great deal to your school dispute, just as it does to virtually all school disputes. Yes, school law involves a lot of federal and state statutes, rules, and regulations, as well as school district policies, school handbooks, and school-building practices. But case law shapes all those legal and practical materials. Case law applies both the code law, like statutes, rules, and regulations, and legal rules and principles drawn from long patterns of decided cases to decide new cases. However, case law also tells your school administrators, indirectly and unconsciously, all the time, and at other times directly and deliberately, what to do or not to do in specific situations. Codes are broad and abstract. Case decisions are narrow, real, and factually on point or distinguishable from each new situation that arises.
Our attorneys know school case law, especially Supreme Court case law. We know which cases decide on which facts apply and which claims in what situations. While the Supreme Court school law cases are relatively few, the lower appellate court cases are innumerable, giving us a vast well of authority from which to draw the tastiest cup, most favorable and influential in your specific circumstances. Let us deploy the common law of education, including its Supreme Court cases, for your best outcome.
Supreme Court Cases in School Cases
Supreme Court opinions, like the opinion in Tinker v Des Moines, have outsized influence in the vast common law pool of education law cases. The Supreme Court decides only a couple hundred discretionary cases each year. The Supreme Court picks and chooses those cases for their potential widespread impact. Supreme Court decisions can have a remarkable impact on everyday life, on a variety of subjects, and in a variety of areas. That impact is especially true in the school setting, which, in order to accomplish its instructional objectives, is a heavily regulated and restrictive environment. Supreme Court decisions on student constitutional rights in the school setting, like the decision in Tinker v Des Moines, are even more impactful because they draw lines between student autonomy, privacy, liberty, property, and other personal interests, on the one hand, and the school's responsibility, authority, and institutional interests on the other hand. We pay attention to Supreme Court constitutional decisions like Tinker v Des Moines so that we can put that impactful case law to its best use to help you achieve your school objectives.
The Facts of Tinker v Des Moines
The facts of a decided case, especially a Supreme Court case, are the first factor that determines a case's reach and influence. If a decided case's facts are right and on point with the facts and circumstances in your matter, then that case is likely to have influence over and possibly control the outcome of your matter. If, instead, a decided case's facts are only marginally like your matter, but the case is still favorable to you, we may be able to cast and construe the facts as equivalent for purposes of the decided case's authority. Those comparisons and contrasts are what make the common law so powerful, allowing the parties in a private dispute and their skilled attorney representatives to choose and apply the cases most fitting and most conducive to their own circumstances. Our attorneys have the abundant student defense experience to know the fact patterns and factual parallels of the decided case to your own case as we analyze and understand it when you retain us.
In Tinker v Des Moines, a group of students and their parents met privately in a home, where they decided to protest the Vietnam War by wearing black armbands for about two weeks around the Christmas and New Year's holidays. School administrators got wind of the plan when a student in a high school journalism class spoke about writing an article on the coming protest. The administrators promptly enacted a school rule against armbands. If a student refused to remove an armband as requested, the school reserved the right to suspend the student. When the protest started, only a few of the 18,000 students in the district wore the black armbands. When school administrators asked some of those students to remove the armbands, two high school students and one middle school student refused. The school suspended all three students. The students did not return to school until after the holidays ended, and the protest ended with the holidays after New Year's Day.
The facts in your school matter or your child's school matter may not involve a black armband protesting war but, instead, a button favoring a political candidate or party, pin siding with a social cause, a sticker celebrating cats or dogs, or a bracelet exhibiting a religious commitment. Those differences may not make any difference to the application to your matter of the Supreme Court's ruling in Tinker v Des Moines if your matter likewise involves free speech rights. On the other hand, if your matter or your student's matter involves the school's refusal to permit a student-led invocation at a school homecoming football game or the approval of an after-school military action video gaming club, then Tinker v Des Moines may have less or no influence, while other cases have greater influence or even precedential control. Our attorneys know how to draw these comparisons and contrasts to deploy the best case law to pursue your desired outcome.
Procedural Posture of Tinker v Des Moines
The procedural posture of a case also influences the case's reach and precedential effect. The procedural posture of a case involves how the case got to court, how the case proceeded through the courts, and how the courts finally decided the case. For instance, if we have exhausted all administrative avenues in the school without the relief you seek, we may recommend suing in federal court rather than state court. That choice may mean that a federal appellate decision in your case only controls or primarily controls only the decisions of other federal courts in the same federal appellate circuit, not the decisions of state courts or of federal courts in other appellate circuits. Likewise, if your case concludes at the trial court level, its decision will likely have little or no effect on any other case because trial court opinions seldom, if ever, get published and distributed. We can identify the appellate cases with the right procedural posture to influence or even control the favorable outcome of your matter.
In Tinker v Des Moines, the three suspended students, acting as necessary through their parents, sued the school district in the local federal district court, an injunction against further school violations of their rights with respect to the armbands and seeking nominal damages. The district court dismissed the case for lack of merit, holding the school district's actions not to violate any student's right. The students appealed the district court's dismissal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. The federal appellate court heard the appeal en banc, meaning that all the circuit's judges participated rather than only a randomly drawn three-judge panel. The en banc court divided evenly over the appeal, leaving in place the district court decision dismissing the students' case. The students sought a Supreme Court review, which the Supreme Court granted. After briefing and argument, the Supreme Court reversed in a 7-2 decision, ruling in the students' favor that the school had violated the students' rights by suspending them for the armbands.
This procedural posture indicates that the Supreme Court's Tinker v Des Moines decision will control all lower federal court decisions on the same issue that the students raised. Because the students relied on federal statutory law and constitutional rights, the Supreme Court's Tinker decision also controls all state court decisions on the same issue, applying the same federal statute and constitutional provision. Tinker v Des Moines also controls the actions of school officials and the decisions of school administrative hearing officers when deciding student matters involving the same federal rights. We can apply Tinker v Des Moines or other controlling authority in your matter toward achieving your goals and objectives.
Legal Claims in Tinker v Des Moines
The legal claims and defenses in a case also determine how others may later use that case's decision to influence or control the outcome of their own case. For instance, when a case presents and decides federal claims, the decision generally only influences or controls other federal claims. The same would be true for state claims, that only a case deciding state claims, and likely only a state court case deciding state claims, would control or influence other state claims. We can discern the decided claims and case law that most support you or your student in your school matters.
In Tinker v Des Moines, the three students sued under the federal civil rights statute 42 USC Section 1983. That statute recognizes a private civil cause of action for injunctive relief and damages against state actors who violate federal rights in certain cases. The students claimed that the school district had violated their First Amendment free speech and associated free expression rights. The students maintained that the black armbands constituted their personal expression of appropriate, non-disruptive civil protest of government action. The students pointed out that their actions and the same actions of a few other students who wore the armbands but whom the school district did not suspend had not actually disrupted any school activity. They further claimed that the school district singling them out for suspension based on their war protest while not suspending students who wore buttons, pins, jewelry, or other items exhibiting social, political, religious, or other views constituted unlawful viewpoint discrimination.
The Supreme Court's Tinker v Des Moines Reasoning
In agreeing with the students' claim that the school district had violated their rights, the Supreme Court articulated rules, principles, and stances that school officials, school districts, state agencies, and state and federal courts all continue to follow in free speech disputes. The Supreme Court first articulated that wearing a black armband, like wearing pins, badges, or other items communicating views, is a symbolic act that the First Amendment's free speech clause protects. The Supreme Court next articulated that students retain free speech rights in the school environment, although those rights are not as extensive as free speech rights outside the school. The Supreme Court next articulated that a school official's fear or apprehension of potential disruption is ordinarily not enough to deny a student the student's free speech rights. The official must observe disruption or reasonably believe that disruption is sure to occur. The Supreme Court further reasoned that avoiding student discomfort or disagreement with an unpopular view does not justify denying a student's free speech rights. Ultimately, the school must show a constitutionally valid reason to regulate student speech, without which students should be free to speak, both for the student's benefit and for the general benefit of the school community.
Quotes from Tinker v Des Moines
The words and expressions that the Supreme Court and other appellate courts use in their opinions can also influence school officials, district officials, state agency officials, their legal representatives, and the courts hearing and deciding your case. Our attorneys know the bold, strong, pithy, subtle, and convincing expressions that Supreme Court justices have from time to time written in their school law cases. Those statements are the lore of education lore, in some instances taking on mythic proportions for the influence they have wielded over schools in their respect for and treatment of the rights of their students. The 7-2 majority opinion written by Justice Abe Fortas in Tinker v Des Moines includes the following memorable and helpful statements:
- “the wearing of an armband for the purpose of expressing certain views is the type of symbolic act that is within the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment” [393 US 505];
- “First Amendment rights, applied in light of the special characteristics of the school environment, are available to teachers and students” [393 US 506];
- “undifferentiated fear or apprehension of disturbance is not enough to overcome the right to freedom of expression” [393 US 508];
- “to justify prohibition of a particular expression of opinion,” the school “must be able to show that its action was caused by something more than a mere desire to avoid the discomfort and unpleasantness that always accompany an unpopular viewpoint” [393 US 509];
- “In our system, state-operated schools may not be enclaves of totalitarianism. School officials do not possess absolute authority over their students.” [393 US 511];
- “students may not be regarded as closed-circuit recipients of only that which the State chooses to communicate” [393 US 511]; and
- “In the absence of a specific showing of constitutionally valid reasons to regulate their speech, students are entitled to freedom of expression of their views.” [393 US 511].“
Holdings of Tinker v Des Moines
Another helpful way of applying Supreme Court decisions and the decisions of other appellate courts is to draw case holdings. A holding combines the case facts, claims, posture, reasoning, and outcome in a concise statement that would guide a school official, district personnel, state agency, or court in how to proceed in the matter before them based on the cited case. Our attorneys don't just throw a bunch of case facts, claims, and quotes at school officials, administrative hearing panels, and court judges. Instead, we draw concise holdings to help guide others who are trying in good faith to determine student rights and their own obligations. Judges and lawyers disagree about case holdings, which is fine. Debate over the law, rule, or principle for which a case stands enables advocates and decision makers to adjust case patterns and expressed wisdom to new circumstances in new cases.
One helpful way to characterize the holding in Tinker v Des Moines is that school officials must accommodate students free speech, including symbolic acts that do not substantially and materially interfere with school operations or instruction, even if some students disagree with the student's expressed view or even find the view annoying or offensive. Another way to characterize the Tinker v Des Moines holding is that students retain free speech rights to engage in symbolic acts expressing political and other views, including by wearing armbands or other personal effects calling attention to those views, as long as the expression does not substantially and materially interfere with school operations. You can see that a key to understanding the Tinker v Des Moines decision is the substantially and materially interfere standard that the Supreme Court articulated for school denial of student free speech viewpoint rights.
Impact of Tinker v Des Moines
The above discussion of the Supreme Court's decision in Tinker v Des Moines is a lot to consider in the abstract. Your interest, though, is not abstract. You are likely reading this information to learn how the Tinker v Des Moines case may impact your school matter or your child's school matter. The impacts of a decided Supreme Court case depend very much on your unique circumstances. We cannot say what those impacts are until you retain us in your case. Please do so promptly so that we can be of the best help. But here are a few potential impacts of the Tinker v Des Moines decision on school free speech cases. Tinker suggests that:
- school administrators should be more solicitous and respectful of student pins, badges, bracelets, stickers, armbands, and other personal items and effects through which students symbolically express their social, political, religious, and other views;
- school administrators should generally not deprive students of using pins, badges, bracelets, stickers, armbands, and other personal items and effects to express their views unless the expression substantially and materially interferes with school operations, in an actual disturbance or real and immediate threat of disturbance;
- school administrators should avoid distinguishing among student expression of views, permitting some views while prohibiting other views in viewpoint discrimination, without first observing substantial and material interference with school operations from the view administrators wish to prohibit; and
- students should limit their viewpoint expression, whether through speech or symbolic acts like wearing armbands, pins, and badges, to views and means that do not substantially and materially interfere with school operations.
Premier Student Defense Attorneys Available
If you or your minor student face free speech, free expression, freedom of religion, freedom of association, or similar issues in your school, or face disciplinary charges and sanctions relating to those or other issues, retain the Lento Law Firm's premier Student Defense Team for our skilled and effective representation and advocacy. Let us help you advocate and resolve your matter for its best outcome, whether within the school or in school or district administrative proceedings, state or federal agency proceedings, or state or federal court litigation. Call 888.535.3686 or use our contact form now to tell us about your case and to retain our highly qualified attorneys.
