Thread: Court upholds "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" banner

Court upholds "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" banner
Mon Mar 13, 8:34 AM ET

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - An Alaska high school violated a student's free speech rights by suspending him after he unfurled a banner reading "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" across the street from the school, a federal court ruled on Friday.

Joseph Frederick, a student at Juneau-Douglas High School in Alaska, displayed the banner -- which refers to smoking marijuana -- in January 2002 to try to get on television as the Olympic torch relay was passing the school.

Principal Deborah Morse seized the banner and suspended the 18-year-old for 10 days, saying he had undermined the school's educational mission and anti-drug stance.

Friday's ruling by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco overturned a decision by a federal court in Alaska that backed Frederick's suspension and said his rights were not violated.

The appeals court said the banner was protected speech because it did not disrupt school activity and was displayed off school grounds during a non-curricular activity.

"Public schools are instrumentalities of government, and government is not entitled to suppress speech that undermines whatever missions it defines for itself," Judge Andrew Kleinfeld wrote in the court's opinion.

The court also cleared the way for Frederick to seek damages, saying Morse was aware of relevant case law and should have known her actions violated his rights.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060313/...RpBHNlYwM3NTc-

Bong Hits for Jesus--LMAO!

Court hears "Bong hits 4 Jesus" case
By James Vicini
Mon Mar 19, 2:31 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In its first major student free-speech rights case in almost 20 years, U.S. Supreme Court justices struggled on Monday with how far schools can go in censoring students. In a case involving a Juneau, Alaska, high school student suspended for unfurling a banner that read "Bong Hits 4 Jesus," several justices seemed wary about giving a principal too much authority at the expense of the student's right to express his views.

"It's political speech, it seems to me. I don't see what it disrupts," a skeptical Justice David Souter said.

"And no one was smoking pot in that crowd," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said, referring to the group of students standing near the banner as the Winter Olympic torch relay passed by in January 2002.

The incident occurred during school hours but on a public sidewalk across from the school. Student Joseph Frederick says the banner's language was meant to be meaningless and funny in an effort to get on television.

Principal Deborah Morse said the phrase "bong hits" referred to smoking marijuana. She suspended Frederick for 10 days because the banner advocated or promoted illegal drug use in violation of school policy.

Justice Stephen Breyer said he was struggling with the case. A ruling for Frederick could result in students "testing limits all over the place in the high schools" while a ruling against Frederick "may really limit people's rights on free speech," Breyer said.

Kenneth Starr, the former special prosecutor who investigated former President Bill Clinton in the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal, said Morse acted reasonably and in accord with the school's anti-drug mission. A Bush administration lawyer, Edwin Kneedler, argued for a broad rule that public schools do not have to tolerate a message inconsistent with its basic educational mission.

"I find that a very, very disturbing argument," Justice Samuel Alito said, adding that schools could define their educational mission so broadly to suppress political speech and speech expressing fundamental student values.

Justice Anthony Kennedy asked Kneedler if the principal could have required the banner be taken down if it had said "vote Republican, vote Democrat."

Kneedler replied the principal has that authority.

Frederick's lawyer, Douglas Mertz of Juneau, said: "This is a case about free speech. It is not a case about drugs."

Mertz argued the court should not abandon its famous 1969 ruling that students do not "shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate," a decision that allowed students to wear black armbands in class to protest the Vietnam War.

But the Supreme Court's last major rulings on the issue went against the students.

The court ruled in 1986 that a student does not have a free-speech right to give a sexually suggestive speech at an assembly and in 1988 that school newspapers can be censored.

A decision in the case is expected by the end of June.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070319/...oqNsfBNW1H2ocA

Mon, Jun. 25, 2007
Court tightens limits on student speech
By MARK SHERMAN - Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court tightened limits on student speech Monday, ruling against a high school student and his 14-foot-long "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" banner.

Schools may prohibit student expression that can be interpreted as advocating drug use, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court in a 5-4 ruling.

Joseph Frederick unfurled his homemade sign on a winter morning in 2002, as the Olympic torch made its way through Juneau, Alaska, en route to the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

Frederick said the banner was a nonsensical message that he first saw on a snowboard. He intended the banner to proclaim his right to say anything at all.

His principal, Deborah Morse, said the phrase was a pro-drug message that had no place at a school-sanctioned event. Frederick denied that he was advocating for drug use.

"The message on Frederick's banner is cryptic," Roberts said. "But Principal Morse thought the banner would be interpreted by those viewing it as promoting illegal drug use, and that interpretation is plainly a reasonable one."

Morse suspended the student, prompting a federal civil rights lawsuit.

Students in public schools don't have the same rights as adults, but neither do they leave their constitutional protections at the schoolhouse gate, as the court said in a landmark speech-rights ruling from Vietnam era.

The court has limited what students can do in subsequent cases, saying they may not be disruptive or lewd or interfere with a school's basic educational mission.

Frederick, now 23, said he later had to drop out of college after his father lost his job. The elder Frederick, who worked for the company that insures the Juneau schools, was fired in connection with his son's legal fight, the son said. A jury recently awarded Frank Frederick $200,000 in a lawsuit he filed over his firing.

Joseph Frederick, who has been teaching and studying in China, pleaded guilty in 2004 to a misdemeanor charge of selling marijuana at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas, according to court records.

Conservative groups that often are allied with the administration are backing Frederick out of concern that a ruling for Morse would let schools clamp down on religious expression, including speech that might oppose homosexuality or abortion.

The case is Morse v. Frederick, 06-278.
http://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/po...ory/76526.html


Not done skimming yet but it’s probably not going to get more surreal than John Roberts dissecting the term “bong hits”:

At least two interpretations of the words on the banner demonstrate that the sign advocated the use of illegal drugs. First, the phrase could be interpreted as an imperative: “[Take] bong hits . . .”— — a message equivalent, as Morse explained in her declaration, to “smoke marijuana” or “use an illegal drug.” Alternatively, the phrase could be viewed as celebrating drug use — —“bong hits [are a good thing],” or “[we take] bong hits”— — and we discern no meaningful distinction between celebrating illegal drug use in the midst of fellow students and outright advocacy or promotion…

The pro-drug interpretation of the banner gains further plausibility given the paucity of alternative meanings the banner might bear. The best Frederick can come up with is that the banner is “meaningless and funny… The dissent similarly refers to the sign’s message as “”curious,””… “”nonsense,””… “”ridiculous,””… “”obscure,”… “silly,””… “”quixotic,”… and “”stupid,”… Gibberish is surely a possible interpretation of the words on the banner, but it is not the only one, and dismissing the banner as meaningless ignores its undeniable reference to illegal drugs.

So essentially, this very important case hinges on how seriously the message can be taken as an incitement to smoke bowls. The test is whether the speech ““materially and substantially disrupt the work and discipline of the school”,” which it apparently does because, per Roberts, dissuading kids from using drugs is an important state interest. It’s the drug reference that’s the key; he goes on to say that the offensiveness of the reference to Jesus isn’t enough to make the speech bannable. Presumably, “Hard Liquor 4 Jesus (If You’re Over 21)” would be okay.

Update: Actually, no, as far as Stevens’s dissent’s concerned, it doesn’t turn on drug use.

It is also perfectly clear that “promoting illegal drug use … comes nowhere close to proscribable incitement to imminent lawless action.”.. Encouraging drug use might well increase the likelihood that a listener will try an illegal drug, but that hardly justifies censorship…

No one seriously maintains that drug advocacy (much less Frederick’’s ridiculous sign) comes within the vanishingly small category of speech that can be prohibited because of its feared consequences. Such advocacy, to borrow from Justice Holmes, “ha[s] no chance of starting a present conflagration.”

Basically they want schools bound by the same rules government is bound by vis-a-vis adults. He goes on to say, for the sake of argument, that perhaps schools should be allowed a bit more leeway than that when it comes to speech that advocates drug use, but the sign wasn’t clearly advocating drug use here. But for the word “Do” before the word “Bong,” alas, we might have had a 9-0 decision.

(Hint: we wouldn’t have.)

I swear that it is only for that students glacoma ..... I heard a song once, what if God Smoked Cannibus, I laughed so hard I about weed myself.

So if free speech doesn't apply to things that MAY promote illegal activities , does that mean we can start arresting people who have t-shirts that show pictures of Bush in cross hairs? I think they made the wrong call.

I heard a song once, what if God Smoked Cannibus, I laughed so hard I about weed myself.

Lyrics please ....

July 01, 2007
An odd case makes good law

George Will comments on the odd-ball free speech in public schools case, "Bong Hits 4 Jesus," decided by the Supreme Court this term. At a school-sanctioned and faculty-supervised event during normal school hours, students were watching the Olympic torch pass through Juneau, Alaska en route to the 2002 Winter Olympics in Utah. Joseph Frederick and some friends, standing on a public street across from their school, unfurled a banner reading "Bong Hits 4 Jesus." The school principal ordered the students to take the sign down. Frederick refused. The principal suspended him for ten days.

By a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court ruled that the principal did not violate Frederick's free speech rights. That ruling seems correct. Either Frederick was urging his fellow students to violate the drug laws or he was uttering random nonsense which students could reasonable construe as urging them to violate the drug laws. In either case, I believe the school has the right to curtail the speech.

Justice Alito, joined by Justice Kennedy, wrote a concurring opinion in which he agreed with the outcome but only on the understanding that (a) it goes no further than to hold that a public school may restrict speech that a reasonable observer would interpret as advocating illegal drug use and (b) it does not support restrictions of speech that can plausibly be interpreted as commenting on any political or social issue, including speech on issues such as the wisdom of the war on drugs or of legalizing marijuana for medicinal use.

I think Alito's approach strikes the correct balance in this context between the school's interest in preventing advocacy, on its premises or at its events, of illegal drug use and the rights of students to comment on political and social issues. Of course, it may not always be easy to make the distinctions that underlie Alito's approach. As Will suggests, somewhere a student may be dreaming up a slogan that puts Alito's test to the test.

http://powerlineblog.com/archives/018107.php