Way back in May 2010, a California high school sent five students home because they wore American flag t-shirts on Cinco de Mayo, an important Mexican holiday, and refused to turn them inside-out. The students went on to sue the school because the prohibition of the shirt, which, they said is a violation of their First Amendment rights. Unfortunately, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last week that security at the school was more important than the students’ right to free speech: The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the officials’ concerns of racial violence outweighed students’ freedom of expression rights. Administrators feared the American-flag shirts would enflame the passions of Latino students celebrating the Mexican holiday. Live Oak High School, in the San Jose suburb of Morgan Hill, had a history of problems between white and Latino students on that day. The unanimous three-judge panel said past problems gave school officials sufficient and justifiable reasons for their actions. The court said schools have wide latitude in curbing certain civil rights to ensure campus safety. “Our role is not to second-guess the decision to have a Cinco de Mayo celebration or the precautions put in place to avoid violence,” Judge M. Margaret McKeown wrote for the panel. The past events “made it reasonable for school officials to proceed as though the threat of a potentially violent disturbance was real,” she wrote. So…yeah, you can burn an American flag as a demonstration of protest, but you can’t wear a t-shirt with depicting the American flag in a school. Makes complete sense! Don’t misunderstand that. Flag burning is indeed a form of free expression protected under the First Amendment, even if it upsets those who are openly patriotic. But so is a student’s right to wear a shirt that may be offensive to fellow classmates. The very point of the First Amendment is to protect free speech, including unpopular speech, though it’s hard to fathom that an American flag t-shirt would be considered unpopular in, you know, America. Some will no doubt use this as an example of forced multiculturalism. That’s not necessarily wrong, but it’s also a separate issue. The real concern here is free speech, and, yet again, a federal court has sided chosen security over the protection of a basic civil liberty. The American Freedom Law Center (AFLC), the legal group that represented the students, will seek another hearing before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. If the students lose again, the AFLC plans to take the case to the Supreme Court.
Posted on: Tue, 04 Mar 2014 07:42:04 +0000
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