Here's an excerpt from Judge Reinhardt's short dissent in Lavine v. Blaine School Dist. (Jan. 2002); Judge Reinhardt was taking the view that a school improperly disciplined a student for writing a poem with a violent theme:
I would add only that at times like those this nation now confronts, it is especially important that the courts remain sensitive to the demands of the First Amendment, a provision that underlies the very existence of our democracy. See Brown v. Hartlage, 456 U.S. 45, 60 (1982) ("[T]he First Amendment [is] the guardian of our democracy.") First Amendment judicial scrutiny should now be at its height, whether the individual before us is a troubled schoolboy, a right-to-life-activist, an outraged environmentalist, a Taliban sympathizer, or any other person who disapproves of one or more of our nation's officials or policies for any reason whatsoever.
Except of course, according to Judge Reinhardt's more recent Harper v. Poway Unified School Dist., when the speaker is saying that homosexuality is shameful, or displaying a Confederate flag, or making any other "derogatory and injurious remarks directed at students' minority status such as race, religion, and sexual orientation" (even if the remarks deal with important public debates, aren't personally addressed to any particular person, are in response to expressions of contrary views, and haven't been found to create a substantial risk of disruption).
The First Amendment, you see, doesn't protect those viewpoints in public high schools. It protects Taliban sympathizers (of course except when they criticize minority religions, or minority sexual orientations). It protects "any other person who disapproves of one or more of our nation's . . . policies for any reason whatsoever." But it doesn't protect condemnation of homosexuality -- an important argument for those who want to explain why they disapprove of, say, the nation's policy on constitutional protection for same-sex sexual relations, or the state's policy on employment discrimination based on sexual orientation. It doesn't protect the Confederate flag, presumably because it's often seen as an expression of disapproval for the nation's civil rights policies. (The Confederate flag can also be seen as having other meanings, but I take it that the offensive meaning, at least today, relates to some degree of disapproval of civil rights policies, which is on very rare occasions actual endorsement of slavery and much more commonly a generalized defense of Southern white culture, including its sometimes racist strains.)
And presumably it doesn't protect speech that criticizes fundamentalist Islam, since that is of course a minority religion. The Taliban sympathizers can speak and criticize Americans and presumably Christians (but not Jews or gays) all they want; but Taliban opponents may not. That's because in the Ninth Circuit there's now a Judge-Reinhardt-created viewpoint-based First Amendment exception for speech that minority high school students find is "derogatory and injurious" towards their "race, religion, and sexual orientation."
I'll say it again: Under existing First Amendment precedents, there is a viewpoint-neutral First Amendment exception for disruptive speech in schools. Sometimes speech that's hostile based on race, religion, or sexual orientation -- as well as speech that offends people for a wide variety of other reasons -- might indeed lead to substantial disruption, and thus might be restricted.
But this is at least a facially viewpoint-neutral standard that potentially applies to speech on all perspectives, and doesn't categorically cast out certain student viewpoints from First Amendment protection. While the standard isn't without its problems, it is at least basically consistent with the First Amendment principle of "equality of status in the field of ideas." And there are quite plausible arguments that the government as K-12 educator should have still broader authority over speech in public schools (though this too would be a viewpoint-neutral First Amendment exception). What bothers me is the Ninth Circuit's newly minted viewpoint-based First Amendment exception, which singles out certain ideas for lack of constitutional protection.
Related Posts (on one page):
- An Appellate Procedure Perspective on the High School Anti-Homosexuality T-Shirt Case:
- Supreme Court Vacates Reinhardt Anti-Homosexual T-Shirt Decision:
- High School Anti-Homosexuality T-Shirt Case Vacated as Moot:
- Harper v. Poway Unified School District and the Supreme Court:
- 4 Votes 4 Bong Hits 4 Jesus:
- "Hate Speech":
- Pro-Taliban Speech Constitutionally Protected, Criticisms of Homosexuality Unprotected:
- Sorry, Your Viewpoint Is Excluded from First Amendment Protection:
How can you say that with a plain face when the section you quoted clearly says otherwise: "Public school students who may be injured by verbal assaults on the basis of a core identifying characteristic..."
Sounds like the Prof is 100% right on this one. Another example of liberal brownshirt intolerance.
Second, recall that the opinion applied not just to personal threats (of the sort that might normally be called "assaults"), or even to personalized insults. It applied to T-shirts that express anti-gay views, and even students' hand drawings of the Confederate flag shown to a few classmates (see West v. Derby Unified School Dist., 206 F.3d 1358 (10th Cir. 2000), which the Reinhardt opinion specifically cited favorably). So if the student's anti-gay poem would be read by any classmates -- for instance, if the student showed it to a few friends and they passed it along to others -- then it would be constitutionally unprotected, under the viewpoint-based Harper First Amendment exception. True, if no-one ever saw the poem, or (possibly) if only the teacher saw it, the matter would be different. But it's a funny sort of First Amendment right that is limited to speech that no-one sees.
Despite EV's excessive modifiers, and writing as a Southerner whose family has lived in the Deep South for at least ten generations, there is no doubt that in 99 out of 100 cases the use of the Confederate battle flag is intended to, at best, be a slight to black Americans and at worst a explicitly racist symbol.
It is the symbol of treason and racial oppression, which, of course, people have the right to express. Just not in school.
If Harper were genuinely an attempt to control just the offensive form of the speech and not its offensive viewpoint, that might be a different story. But it's clear that it's the viewpoint -- criticism of minority sexual orientations, religions, and races -- that is the issue here.
First, I agree that a free speech policy or constitutional mandate should support such speech. But, that said, I take serious issue with the notion that these are "the nation's" (or "the state's") policy towards same-sex sexual regulations.
Again, there are far more substantial violations of free speech perpetrated against those who seek to defend alternative sexualities generally, or their own alternative sexuality particularly.
B) Anon1ms: My family and I have lived in the South forever and in my experience, Prof. Volokh's characterization is quite correct.
'Some expressions of free speech are equal, but some are more equal than others'
Contemplating Prof. Volokh's most recent post, possibly the Harper ruling should be called the Seinfeld precedent, not that there's anything wrong with that (other than the gross, inequitable, and selective abridgement of free speech).
I don't think that condemning a lifestyle as morally inferior is fundamentally different. You still have to argue that the feelings and self-esteem of some individuals trump the free speech rights of other indiviuals.
Do you really think that a gay student feels different when he sees a shirt that says "homosexuality is morally wrong" than a student who's father is in the military feels when he sees a shirt that says "marines kill babies?"
I do think that one problem with the disruption test is that it discriminates against speech based on the reaction of the audience. Therefore, a well-informed student group could cause disruption simply to bar speech that they dislike. But why privilege the people who cause the disruption?
Now on a related topic (the First Amendment in schools), I noted that parents in Georgia are trying to remove the Harry Potter books from teh school libraries because they discuss evil! The books are the most frequently borrowed books in the library system. I would think that books that promoted reading (especially for boys) would be praised.
What I think is interesting here is that Harper is a retreat from Cohen, not from Lavine. In Cohen, the majority chided insulted onlookers that they should just "avert their eyes." But here, Reinhardt treats the fellow students as a captive audience, like the bus ad cases, not voluntary readers as in Cohen. And it's not obvious to me that Reinhardt is relying on the age difference (and there was evidence in Cohen that some of the people in the courthouse were children, in any event).
Is it possible to establish a First-Amendment, K-12 exception which allows schools to restrict speech which demeans someone simply because of who they are (homosexuals, Christians, minority and majority members alike) while still mandating that speech which merely offends (but is not disruptive) is protected?
Jim
A number of people have argued that "Homosexuality is shameful" is unacceptable because it's condemning a person or group as a whole. How about instead of saying "Homosexuality is shameful" the kid's shirt said "Anal sex is shameful"? (Granted, the word "sex" is probably banned as lewd, or something). Or even "sodomy is shameful"? Presumably, that's condemning an act, rather than a set of people. It's probably also closer to what the shirt intended to convey in the first place anyways.
The case arises, because the School has promoted tolerance of homosexuality and homosexual students, and a student wishes to oppose the School's policy of tolerance and tolerance-promotion. The School, it seems to me, is properly obligated to respect expressions of dissent, but not necessarily required to simply ignore defiance. It is a potentially subtle point of distinction, in which fine points of the differences between free expression and regulation of conduct and discipline come into play.
The Confederate flag, to take one example, does indeed have a variety of symbolic meanings. One of original meanings is the advocacy of treason, i.e. conducting war and insurrection against the government of the United States. A public School is obligated to oppose treason, as a matter of policy. The advocacy of treason is going to be problematic.
Yes, and how isn't that viewpoint discrimination? If the somebody said that Republicans have been historically misrepresented in the media and in education ("oppressed, if you will), so any speech demeaning them (or their policies, because you can't demean their policies without demeaning them) is verbotten on school grounds, would that be viewpoint discrimination? Speech promoting tax cuts would be allowed, but speech saying "tax cuts are shameful" would not be.
Under Harper, it's conceivable that criticism of Islam, illegal immigration, and affirmative action would all be disallowed, while speech in support of these positions would all remain constitutionall protected. How is that viewpoint neutral?
What a hypocrite, to argue that the First Amendment is absolute when it comes to Taliban sympathizers, but is outweighed by competing considerations when speech criticizes homosexuality or offends Muslims.
And yet, a Ninth Circuit panel agreed with him 2-to-1.
One more reason to split the Ninth Circuit, so that one-fifth of the nation's population will not have to live under its wacky rulings.
No, the decision only creates a right to be free from demeaning speech for "historically oppressed" and "vulnerable" minorities. That's the problem.
The beauty of it: In 25 years, will those non-oppressed and non-vulnerable groups, after being subject to permissible public denigration all that time, be entitled to protection as "historically oppressed?"
What we have is temporal equal protection: at some point during history, everyone will have their viewpoints suppressed.
Would any one of us break a sweat in framing a justification for extending this right not to be offended to Christians or some other group in power? Footnote 28 notwithstanding, it would be easy -- just fiddle with the level of generality ("religious groups have historically suffered discrimination") or string some examples of harassment or persecution together without considering whether they accurate reflect the whole.
Reinhardt lobs this bomb into a society where a conservative party with strong religious ties dominates three branches of government. It's a society where Christians make up a huge majority and evangelical Christians a solid majority and yet a large number of them have convinced themselves that "happy holidays" is some sort of coercive hate speech and that there is a war on their favorite holiday. How stupid would Reinhardt have to be not to suspect that his little exception will hop the fence?
I am consistently astounded by people who argue (correctly) that the burden of free speech has always fallen disproportionately on disfavored groups, but who are blind to the fact that free speech exceptions have fallen even more heavily on such groups.
Bad examples. Who you are may be a racial or gender characteristic, and a few other things. Christian is not who you are, it is what you believe, which is way different. As for homosexuals, it is bitterly debated, of course.
There are plenty of people who think those sentiments are inherently assaults on ethnic groups. There was a time when I would have assumed that a court would separate out the policy argument and the group it is likely to impact, and say that the statements are not attacks. After Harper, I'm not so sure.
http://www.cir-usa.org/cases/white_v_lee.html
Thus, I think the ACLU must share some blame for this awful decision and its theoretical underpinnings.
And for its possible result, which will be to give Muslim students the right to exercise a heckler's veto over even mild depictions of the prophet Mohammed, such as those censored on South Park.
As Clayton Cramer points out, the Ninth Circuit opinion was authored by Judge Reinhardt, who is married to the ACLU's longtime Southern California leader.
On the other hand, Jordan Budd of the San Diego ACLU conceded publicly that plaintiff Harper might have had a valid free speech claim under current law, although the ACLU did nothing to help him.
Reinhardt is dead wrong, and ignorant of history, to claim that Muslims are a historically oppressed group. Simply because they are not a majority does not make them oppressed.
It may be that he views the war on terror as an imperialistic, discriminatory assault on Muslims by an overly powerful America, as many in the ACLU do. If so, that reflects badly on him, not on those he seeks to silence.
Whatever the merits of his past decisions, he is a hypocrite.
There are probably some criticisms of homosexuality that wouldn't fall into this category, particularly those that focus on particular behaviors rather than on an identity category (as this shirt did) and refrain from the kind of hostile tone this shirt used. "Gay sex is a sin" is very different from "Homosexuality is shameful" (though it is also a different point of view).
WRONG, under Harper one can "attack other students" aslong as they're not one of the favored minorities. That's the problem, SLS1L. Why are you willfully avoiding this conclusion?
Your ox is being gored, finally, and you aren't happy about it. I want to consider how many conservative oxen your side was goring, torturing, and disemboweling with Lenny Bruce, Cohen, and virtual child pornography. Now you are upset that someone wants to wear a T-shirt that says, "Homosexuality is shameful"?
With most of the sitting 9th Circuit judges assigned to the new "12th Circuit," which will cover Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands.
If there's an historically oppressed group in the context of American history, it is not Muslims.
Looks like the term "homosexuality" can go either way. Ahem.
Why isn't Harper viewpoint discrimination?
Maybe so, because when I think "homosexuality is shameful," I think of the act and not someone's personal feelings.
Most people see "shame" in what you do, not in what you desire.
How about "Scientology is a fraud"?
How about "Scientologists are insane"?
How should a school's ban on any of these 3 t-shirts come out?
Nick
Really? Pedophiles, even reforming pedophiles are routinely denigrated and stigmatized based upon what they desire. Your idiosyncratic view of "homosexuality" being synonomous with acts, rather than orientation notwithstanding, (not to mention your thinly veiled reference to bisexuality) it's clear that the court used its common sense in giving the shirt the meaning that the majority of its intended audience would understand it to mean.
1. Inflation was largely determined by money supply.
2. Free market capitalism was the most effective way to improve the economic situation of the average person.
3. Government regulation of air travel, trucking, and electric utilities was bad for consumers.
Yet all three of these ideas are now not only respectable, but mainstream.
On the other end of things, the following ideas would not have been unrespectable in 1974:
1. Men should be able to marry men, women should be able to marry women.
2. Sex with animals is okay. (Not just, "shouldn't be illegal" but "there's nothing wrong with it.")
3. Schools should encourage homosexuals to feel good about themselves, and organize events to promote this.
These ideas would have been regarded as completely whacko in 1974--a sign, perhaps, of mental illness. Yet all three of these are mainstream today. They aren't a majority position in the general population, although they almost certainly are among professors and lawyers.
There's a lot of talk about political polarization in America. Part of it is that the left has moved farther left, and the right has moved farther right.
Because hostility to homosexuality is "icky."
When I graduated from high school, there was awareness of homosexuality, and I suspect that most of my peers shared my view, "That's not for me, but if that's what turns you on, that's fine. But I'm not interested, so leave me alone." I am sure that if a student came to school wearing a T-shirt that expressed support for homosexuality, the school would have sent him home to change--and they would have tried very hard to emphasize to him that they really didn't much care (that wouldn't be very liberal, would it?), but they didn't want any disruptive behavior that it might cause.
I'll take a revision of Tinker that lets the school decide that certain topics don't belong on school grounds--viewpoint neutral. You can't wear your "Homosexuality is shame" T-shirt, but neither can students or teachers distribute gay pride materials, either.
Much more reluctantly, I would accept the same free speech rules as in adult society--agani, viewpoint neutral. I am reluctant because you can't usefully teach students who feel that they have a right to stand up in the middle of a lecture or discussion and start yammering on about how whatever the student feels like. That would be an intolerable situation (rather like some of my son's middle school classes in California), but it would be a consistent liberal position. Dumb, but well-intentionedly dumb.
What I will not accept in any form at all is the sort of cynical dishonesty of liberals like Judge Reinhardt, who believe in giving the school authority to suppress viewpoints that they don't like, bu requiring the school to follow adult rules when it comes to viewpoints that liberals do like.
Do you think "heterosexuality" means just coitus?
Please explain to me how the government retains the authority to prohibit sex with animals, post-Lawrence. Some of the laws that Lawrence struck down were originally bans on bestiality, and suffer all the same problems of reflecting Christian morality and hostility to non-procreative sex.
Sins of omission, Clayton, sins of omission.
The Texas law struck down in Lawrence had been modified by the Texas legislature in 1972 (74?). At that time, the good people of Texas chose to decriminalize beastiality, along with all manner of heterosexual "perversions". They left on the books only the proscription of same-sex sex. They apparently suffered from the same anti-gay obsessions you do.
Part of the problem here is that the statement on the shirt in fact tethers two seperate components. The first component is political expression on the topic of homosexuality in society--theoretically protected a la the black armbands in Tinker. The second is an attack on the actually homosexual students in the school--unprotected, a la a racial epithet.
So the real question here is, how do we weigh the varying importance of these two factors? A general answer is, to me at least, not at all obvious.
Anonymous Reader
Do those places teach tolerance?
Well, last I checked, Vermont and Arizona didn't observe those holidays until recently (2000 or so). If I recall, that's one of the reason's why the Superbowl wasn't held in Arizona several years ago.
But my broader point is that you don't need to teach tolerance with a particular agenda. What would be the argument if a public school held an event on tolerance by some religious groups and someone wore a shirt that said, "God is evil" or something to that effect? Some would argue that being religious is a choice and being a homosexual is not. But that particular discussion hasn't been settled now has it?
Anonymous Reader
(1) Could Eugene's objection be addressed by making the test *broader*? E.g., a prohibition on *all* speech that seeks to insult by "strik[ing] at a core identifying characteristic of students"? It seems to be the limit to expressions about particular groups that is causing Eugene and others the most agitas.
(2) In fact, why not get even broader than that? Why shouldn't the school be able to prohibit my "Non-AP students are stupid" shirt -- even if it does not lead to demonstrable disruption? It doesn't directly target an identifying characteristic -- signing up for an AP class -- and maybe it expresses a strongly held viewpoint; but it's insulting, and mean-spirited, and the students are somewhat captive. Shouldn't that be enough?
The case gets around Tinker by creating a new right of "historically oppressed" or "vulnerable" minorities to be free from perceived criticism of their "core characteristics."
So many people want to force acceptance of certain things, rather than simply seeking toleration. These same people do not want to tolerate, never mind accept, people with certain religious beliefs (and conservatives in general). I think that we all need to learn the lesson of our ancestors and work towards tolerance: we can all be convinced of our own righteousness, proselytize others about this righteousness, but we can't wage civil war against the heathens. Satisfy yourself that everyone who disagrees with you is evil, stupid, &/or going to hell, but stop trying to use the government against them.
That so many liberals want to use the government to force acceptance onto their opponents while denying them toleration bespeaks an ignorance of history and a wildly misguided approach.
As previously mentioned in many posts, I do not agree with Clayton about social issues. I generally share EV's social opinions (essentially libertarian), but I am vigourously opposed to the methods of the groups with whom I agree. It's ridiculous, but rather common for libertarians, to have to ally against people who you agree with because they are simply resorting to force rather than debate.
Perhaps Judge Reinhardt finds it appropriate to come up with newer conceptions of "traditional" values, arguably more appropriate for our times and at any rate more in line with Judge Reinhardt's own value system. But there is a difficulty if judges attempt to create their own, novel exceptions unanchored in well-settled law or in bounded legal concepts such as original intent.
If judges are permitted to exercise such powers on their own in common-law fashion, if "traditional" exceptions become merely things that irk a particular judge's ire, what will become of the First Amendment's core? How can exceptions, each reasonable-seeming, be prevented from eating away the core? Traditionally it was the unreasonable ideas that were thought most in need of protection. Unreasonable ideas, reflected on and thought about, can sometimes seem more reasonable after all.
What would have happenned in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s if the conservative equivalents of Judge Reinhardt had applied analagous extensions of traditional categories to prohibit discussion of the very idea of liberalizing viewpoints on homosexuality, anti-discrimination laws, etc. on the grounds that such ideas were inherently disruptive? Liberals have benefitted greatly from judges' past refusal to extend traditional categories, and should not forget this.
Students should use the pro-gay "Day of Silence," April 26, to test the level of tolerance in the public schools by wearing a range of messages on their clothes that day, messages that will require the school authorities to distinguish what can and cannot be said in the public schools. This is in response to the decision in Harper v Poway in which the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, led by its most liberal, activist jurist, Stephen Reinhart, who has no problems bending the law to his preferences, upheld a preliminary injunction banning a student T-shirt message that said (handwritten on what appears to be masking tape or white adhesive tape): "BE ASHAMED, OUR SCHOOL EMBRACED WHAT GOD HAS CONDEMNED" AND "HOMOSEXUALITY IS SHAMEFUL." For example:
SILENCE IS SHAMEFUL
BE SILENT AND KNOW THAT I AM GOD.
BIGOTRY IS SHAMEFUL
TOLERANCE IS SHAMEFUL
PROMISCUITY IS SHAMEFUL
You get the idea.
But my life is much richer knowing and loving people of all ethnicities.
Now consider gays. People are taught that gays are 'shameful.' Stay away from them. But I believe schools SHOULD teach toleration, and even acceptance. Why? Because otherwise you might be missing out on some of the best friendships you could have. Schools should be about challenging your beliefs, not going along with them. As Anne Morrow Lindbergh once said, 'Only through growth, change, and progress, can true security be found."
Students in today's society will have to live and work in a community that has blacks, muslims, gays, atheists, and so on. It's a basic skill to have to tolerate at the least these people, otherwise you will be leading a very isolated life. And to learn acceptance? What, jeez, isn't that exacly what Jesus taught, to love one another as we love ourselves? he didn't say only whites, or straight people. He said everyone! For those of you who want to teach religion in schools, or ethics or morality, why is it that that one commandment of Jesus is the one thing you persistently ignore?
(Acts of) intolerance will not be tolerated at The Pennsylvania State University.
Hmmm...
Here's an excerpt from Judge Reinhardt's short dissent in Lavine v. Blaine School Dist. (Jan. 2002); Judge Reinhardt was taking the view that a school improperly disciplined a student for writing a poem with a violent theme...
This is a mischaracterization of Reinhardt's dissent. Reinhardt specifically stated that he joined Kleinfeld's dissent, except for the relatively minor reasons that he mentioned in his separate opinion. The bases for Reinhardt's dissent must be read in that light.
Oh, the student's beliefs were challenged. He just wasn't allowed to defend them. That's a step further, I think. And why does this "challenging beliefs" thing only seem to go one way?
Hey, I'm with you to an extent. Schools reflect community values and these values are essentially indoctrinated into kids. That's OK. I know some would prefer to call it education or enlightenment, but let's not kid ourselves. It's essentially indoctrination. This is the socialization process of schools, the boundaries may be fuzzy but nobody should really desire we throw it out the window.
The thing is, this sort of moralizing and socializing should probably be limited to issues that the community generally agrees. I'm not sure we're quite there yet on homosexuality, perhaps in some communities but definitely not in most. It's one of the areas where schools should probably refrain from moralizing. I know a lot of people like to compare race and homosexuality, but the American just don't feel they're comparable (and maybe never will).
"To translate that proposition into a workable constitutional rule, I would, in cases like this, cast upon those complaining the burden of showing that a particular school measure was motivated by other than legitimate school concerns--for example, a desire to prohibit the expression of an unpopular point of view, while permitting expression of the dominant opinion."
"I will not tolerate what God has condemned" is OK by me. "Homosexuality is shaemful" is not.
I want to thank Professor Volokh for his courage in taking on Reinhardt's blatant hypocrisy.
Can the word/phrase be used in other contexts?
Which reminds me, would "Republicans are Shameful" pass muster?
"I am not a big fan of homosexuality."
"Homosexuality is unpleasant"
"I mildly dislike homosexuality."
"Homosexuality is unnatural."
"I strenuously object to homosexuality."
"Homosexuality is condemned by god."
"I am repulsed by homosexuality."
"Homosexuality is shameful"
"I hate homosexuality."
"Homosexuality should be illegal."
Let's see Reinhardt sort that one out.
That being said, I could indepedantly defend the false schism proffered by EV - the First Amendment is more important when it defends unpopular speech. Yes, yes, I know many people think that because it is academically "PC" to support gay rights (though all PC means in this case is there's no good reason to continue to support bigotry if you use rationality, so irrational people resort to "PC" arguments). But in the context of a public high school, to think that gays and lesbians are the cool kids and don't need actual protection from harrassment, intimidation, and violence is an exercise in theory devoid of common sense.
On the other side, a (nonthreatening) POEM (done, I assume, as an in class assignment, and not done solely for the intent to provoke) with a "violent theme" that is not shared by even a handful of that person's classmates is going to have no harmful effect whatsoever, and seems exactly like the type of unpopular speech traditionally protected by the First Amendment.
For EV to be outraged over the real harm done by persecution of gay (mostly boys) in high schools around this country in order to support some foolish hypocracy (or more to the point, to support EV's philosophical allies and preserve EV's own self-confidence in those alliances) is, to put it mildly, unfortuante. That doesn't necessarily mean that Reinhardt's opinion is correct. But there's a large leap between simply incorrect and unreasonable and outrageous.
For those who posted the satirical T-shirt sayings, are you arguing that "Faggots are filthy" is OK (assume it is OK under Tinker - it is not disruptive)? If not, where would you draw the line and on what basis?
And it does seem to me that some of the T-shirt ideas are really mean and rude, when considering that there may well be students who are gay who may see the T-shirts. There obviously has been an effort by the Christian right to bring their religious views into the public school using students, including student T-shirts. Why should people who recognize that there are gay students in high schools promote wearing deliberately provocative, mean T-shirts?
Many on the religious right believe that the only way to heaven is to accept Jesus. Yet, I don't think anyone has proposed wearing T-shirts to school that say "Jews will go to hell unless they accept Jesus." Why is that? Perhaps because it is commonly accepted that such a statement is not appropriate in a public setting open to people of different faiths.
Is the claim of those who oppose this decision (a) that students have a constitutional right to damage the education and psychological health of other students or (b) that attacks directed at core characteristics of members of historically vulnerable minority groups doesn't do this?
Speech is being singled out not based on its content, but on its potential for damage.
That's assuming, of course, that "potential for damage" is really a neutral term and not will be applied evenly across the political spectrum. Somehow, I really doubt that's the case.
But we're not arguing about whether or not it is appropriate. We are arguing about whether or not it may be constitutionally banned. Surely you don't suggest that all "inappropriate" speech lacks constitutional protection?
And can we PLEASE stop with the "core characteristic" mumbo jumbo? What is a core charactertistic? Does this mean innate, immutable, or just important? If religion can be a "core characteristic," then why isn't Harper's religion a "core charactertistic"? Oh, because he isn't a member of a "historically oppressed" or "vulnerable" minority?
Permissable: "Christianity is shameful."
Not permissable: "Islam is shameful."
Permissable: "Homophobia is shameful."
Not permissable: "Homosexuality is shameful."
Permissable: "No human being is illegal."
Not permissable: "Enforce our immigration laws!"
But, in your deluded mind, this isn't viewpoint discrimination, it's merely identifying the most "harmful" speech. Wouldn't we all like to silence our critics and the thoughts we deem corrosive and without merit? Perhaps, but the First Amendment is supposed to prevent, rather than accomodate, that perspective.
Justice Black (in dissent) noted that the speech was disruptive:
And, yet, the majority believed that this evidence of disruption did not rise to the level of "subtantial intereference with school discipline."
Liberals like Judge Reinhardt selflessly tackle the daunting task of bringing superior knowledge and virtue to an ignorant and recalcitrant public, and we should be grateful that they take the trouble to do so.
(PS: The above was sarcasm.)
I don't know, I'm one of those "turn back the clockers" myself. I think you are right; as was Justice Black in his Tinker Dissent:
"The Court's holding in this case ushers in what I deem to be an entirely new era in which the power to control pupils by the elected "officials of state supported public schools . . ." in the United States is in ultimate effect transferred to [Judge Reinhardt]."
Let me therefore pose a slightly different scenario -- suppose the shirt in question said "Condemn Homosexuality". Containing identical sentiment in different (but symmetrical) verbiage, would the fundamental rights guarranteed by the First Amendment include the right to wear such a shirt? Or would it still fall outside the scope of the fundamental liberties of students?
"Christianity is Good"
"Christians are Evil"
One is supporting a certain belief while the other is attacking it. This is much like:
"Gay people should be accepted"
"Homosexuality is a sin"
Again each statement deals with different content not viewpoints. Two divergent viewpoints would be something like:
"Gay people should be accepted"
"Gay people should not be accepted".
Assuming schools can regulate such speech under Tinker or Fraser, the Supreme Court has held that unprotected speech can be regulated on a content basis (Virginia v. Black).
This is silly. And I think based on those with whom Ben has argued in the past, he knows better.
Sexual orientation is much more than one's "favorite method of sex." It is as its heart about the need to find one's better half. And most heterosexuals do indeed define themselves through their spouses. Their spouses, should they be lucky enough to have one for the long term, are indeed of the most if not *the* most important thing in their lives.
To say that homosexuality describes a "person" is ridiculous. Does heterosexuality describe a person? Or is that a inclination? Do we call people who like young kids a pedophile? Or are they called pedophiles because of their activities?
The bottom line is that all of these are just titles or labels that people have adopted.
I won't even touch on whether or not the shirt is/should be allowed. Why in the world was the school having a gay/lesbian day to begin with? Are black panthers given a special day? How about neonazis? "Hey, we may not like X, but we should tolerate it!" Or "... this is not about toleration... but about acceptance." Why shouldn't we accept neonazis? Or how about KKK members? Someone say that they aren't accepted because they advocate violence. Well, a lot of groups advocate violence, but do all of the individuals in said group feel the same?
Sorry to ask all of these rhetorical questions, but this is not open and shut as some would have us believe. This is obviously a highly contentious social issue that has no business in a High School classroom since it provides no educational value (the assumption being that HS is for the basic fundamentals).
Anonymous Reader
Had the T-shirt in question read "Kill All Fags," I would applaud the court siding with the school. (And I they should ban the opposing "All Homophobes Must Die" T-shirt, at the same time.) Such T-shirts move beyond expressing fundamental moral disagreement--which, like the T-shirts in this case, should be protected, especially for high-school-age students (and what a teaching opportunity for any number of students the "Homosexuakity Is Shameful" shirt could be)--and into direct intimidation, threat and exhortations to violence, which should be banned on school grounds.
I still want an answer to my question: do students have a constitutional right to interfere with the education of other students? Do schools really have no power to block shirts that say "Jews are Christ-killers"?
1) You can't tell if they are left-handed either. Sexual Orientation is as much of an innate and unchosen characteristic as handedness.
2) Some homosexuals claim to have "gaydar" and can indeed tell whether someone is gay via their mugshot. Indeed, I can show you some straight faced mugshots and I think many heterosexual people would be able to tell sexual orientation.
Yes.
Pedophilia harms children. End of discussion. That's why the acts are wrong. Pedophilia's defining characteristic of "wrongness" makes it entirely distinguishable from homosexual acts between consenting adults.
SLS1L, how disingenous!
I supposed Tinker could have explicitly limited its decision to non-verbal speech against unpopular wars. But, wait, they didn't do that!
Reinhardt explicitly limited the reach of the decision because "different circumstances require different results." That is, speech Reinhardt isn't offended by should be treated as the First Amendment actually commands.
Of course there is "nothing in the opinion [that] precludes a finding that there are other kinds of speech that interfere with students' educational opportunities/interfere with their psychological well-being." But the argument that future judges are free to reject the Reinhardt's viewpoint discrimination is hardly an argument in favor of Reinhardt's viewpoint discrimination.
Please don't misinterpret me. I am not trying to equate homosexuality with pedophilia. I was merely trying to state that we don't call people pedophiles for no reason; they are called pedophiles because of their acts. Just as an arsonist wouldn't be an arsonist without committing some specific act(s) that qualify them as arsonists.
So if heterosexuality describes a person, does bisexuality describe a person? Or is it an inclination/act?
But again, why did the HS hold the event to begin with?
Anonymous Reader
In other words, under his reasoning, a student should be able to write an essay for a government class opposing the Lawrence decision, but couldn't put the text of that essay on the back of his denim jacket. Sensible?
Did you not read what Volokh quoted?
How do these sentiments not apply to the Harper case?
So I gues my "left-handedness is shameful" T-shirt is unconstitutional too.
I answered a similar question earlier. It depends. Under Tinker there must be "substantial inteference of school discipline." It's unlikely that a shirt like this would cause more disruption than the war protesters did in Tinker, so I would have to say it would probably be protected. But I can conceive of a case where the constitutional standard would be met as well. Should it be protected? Well, that's a different question.
All this said, I wouldn't have a problem with a ruling that said X speech is needlessly provocative and likely to "substantially intefere with school discipline." If Harper had been decided this way, it's doubtful we would have ever heard of the case.
Instead, I think that Reinhardt meant core self-identifying characteristics, that is, the answer to the question: Who am I? There are countless ways to describe any given person, but each of us takes a small subset of those characteristics to define ourselves.
Each person's subset is different. If you ask a hundred people: "Who are you?", you'll get a wide range of answers. Some people will tell you their job or profession. Others will tell you about their past accomplishments, their skills, their friends, their family, their religion, their genealogy, their race, their political views, their hobby, their physical characteristics, or their favorite sports team. More likely, you'll get three to six of those.
People define themselves in all sorts of ways, and some of those self-definitions are better than others. My point is that it's awfully shallow to define yourself in terms of how you like to have sex. It's like saying: "Hi, I'm Ted, and I like to eat steak." Elevating a favorite animal pleasure to a place of key importance in your life suggests that you don't have much of a life.
What I inferred from Judge Reinhardt's statement is that he views a person's sexual orientation as a profoundly important aspect of their existence. I find that view shallow at best, and dehumanizing at worst. I believe that we are more than our genitals.