The Supreme Court handed down 5 new cases today as the Term is coming soon to its end; among today’s decisions was Morse v. Frederick, a.k.a. the “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” case.
Chief Justice Roberts wrote the 5-Justice majority opinion, which held that schools can punish student speech reasonably believed to promote illegal drug use (which in the majority’s view the “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” banner did).
There were a slew of concurrences in the case, suggesting that the Court was much more splintered than the majority opinion indicates. Justice Alito concurred, joined by Kennedy, stating that he joined the majority opinion on the understanding that the holding was really very very narrow. According to Alito, the case is really just about speech that promotes illegal drug use in schools without a plausible claim to making an argument relating to a social or political issue (whether about the war on drugs or something else).
On the other side of the narrow/broad divide, Justice Thomas wrote a separate concurring opinion endorsing Justice Black’s dissenting opinion in Tinker v. Des Moines to the effect that public school students don’t have First Amendment rights at school at all. (Pretty impressive that Roberts kept a majority together given the broad range of views among the five Justices that joined it.)
Justice Breyer concurred in the judgment: he would have resolved the case on qualified immunity grounds without reaching the merits. Justice Stevens dissented, joined by Justices Souter and Ginsburg.