Legal News

T-Shirts-at-School and the Law, Reprised (Again)

By Dan Slater

A school in Tennessee can prohibit students from wearing clothing that depicts the confederate flag. A high school in San Diego cannot force a teacher to take down religiously-themed banners in the classroom. But a school in Pennsylvania can suspend an eighth-grader for creating a fake MySpace page depicting her principal as a pedophile and a sex addict.

Another week, another ’school & free speech’ case. This time we head back to Pennsylvania, where a federal judge has sided with a school district in a dispute over whether a high school student should have been barred from wearing a T-shirt with images of guns on it.

“Students have no constitutional right to promote violence in our public schools,” U.S. District Judge James Knoll Gardner wrote in this opinion. Here are reports from the First Amendment Center and the Lancaster newspapers.

Donald Miller III, now a 15-year-old sophomore at Penn Manor High School, wore a black T-shirt to school with two gun images printed on it. One, on a front pocket, is overprinted with the words “Volunteer, Homeland Security.” The other, on the back, is overprinted with the words “Special Issue — Resident — Lifetime License — United States Terrorist Hunting Permit . . . No Bag Limit.” In December, Miller was given detention after defying an order to turn the shirt inside-out.

Judge Gardner disagreed with Millers’ parents’ assertion that his First Amendment rights had been trampled. Why? Interestingly, the judge noted that schools have been forced to become increasingly vigilant about potential warning signs of violence following massacres at such places as Columbine, Virginia Tech, and an Amish school in Nickel Mines. Also, he wrote: “There is no constitutionally protected political message contained in Donald’s shirt but there is a message of use of force, violence and violation of law in the form of illegal vigilante behavior.”

A lawyer for Miller’s parents, Leonard G. Brown III (pictured), a shareholder at the Lancaster law firm Clymer & Musser, told the First Amendment Center: “Most Americans would agree that wearing the T-shirt was a political statement. His teacher said he wasn’t the kind of student they ever thought would do something violent.”

LB Readers: Two weeks ago, if you remember, 11-year-old Daxx Dalton was suspended for refusing to remove a t-shirt that read: “Obama is a terrorist’s best friend.” Does Judge Gardner’s ruling give any indication of how a judge might rule in young Daxx’s case?

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on October 08, 2008 (boomark / email).