15-Year-Old Honors Student Disciplined for Wearing American Flag

^{Category: Free Speech}

The ACLU has taken the case of Malia Fontana, a San Diego high school sophomore who has had an incident report filed against her for wearing an American flag in her back pocket. She wore the flag to protest the school's treatment of another student, who had been forced to remove an American flag headband. From the ACLU's press release:

Malia has long supported young people's rights. In 8th grade, she wrote a paper in support of the Children's Bill of Rights for which she received a grade of A+. In that paper, she concluded, "All in all, children are the most exposed members of society and need a voice to be heard." Malia said she thinks students should be allowed to wear any flag and express themselves in any way that does not disrupt school.

"Freedom of speech is the first principle of a free society, and our public schools have a special duty to honor the constitutional rights of students," said the ACLU of San Diego and Imperial County's Legal Director David Blair-Loy. "Unjustified censorship of students undermines freedom of speech for all."

The press release refers to the most recent landmark Supreme Court ruling on the free speech rights of students, Tinker v. Des Moines (1969), in which Justice Abe Fortas famously wrote:

In our system, state-operated schools may not be enclaves of totalitarianism. School officials do not possess absolute authority over their students. Students in school as well as out of school are "persons" under our Constitution. They are possessed of fundamental rights which the State must respect, just as they themselves must respect their obligations to the State. In our system, students may not be regarded as closed-circuit recipients of only that which the State chooses to communicate. They may not be confined to the expression of those sentiments that are officially approved. 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 ...

Freedom of expression would not truly exist if the right could be exercised only in an area that a benevolent government has provided as a safe haven for crackpots. The Constitution says that Congress (and the States) may not abridge the right to free speech. This provision means what it says. We properly read it to permit reasonable regulation of speech-connected activities in carefully restricted circumstances. But we do not confine the permissible exercise of First Amendment rights to a telephone booth or the four corners of a pamphlet, or to supervised and ordained discussion in a school classroom.

See also:

• The 2006 Jefferson Muzzle Awards
• School Web Censor Filters Minority Religions
• Parents Allowed to Burn School Books