And this time it is a liberal being censored!

Big Bear High School student Mariah Jimenez should be allowed to wear the "Prop. 8 Equals Hate" T-shirt she was banned from wearing on campus, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

The 16-year-old sophomore, who is her class president, wore the tie-dyed T-shirt to school on Nov. 3, the day before voters approved the constitutional amendment prohibiting same-sex marriage in California.

Mariah's sixth-period teacher, Sue Reynolds, ordered her to remove the shirt during a meeting of the Associated Student Body.

When Mariah protested, Reynolds sent her to the principal's office.

"She said I shouldn't be wearing such divisive shirts, and my shirt draws a line down the school," said

Now IÂ’ve taken a pretty hard line on student speech in the past, relying on the seminal case in Tinker v. Des Moines, in which the Supreme Court ruled that students do not shed their First Amendment rights at the schoolhouse gate. However, since Jimenez lives in the Ninth Circuit, IÂ’m going to have to take a different position, because the Ninth Circuit decided to overrule that precedent from a higher court and the higher court (the US Supreme Court) punted when offered the opportunity to reassert its authority and acknowledge that student speech on important political and social issues is protected by the First Amendment.

The irony, of course, is that the decision in which the Ninth Circuit stripped students of their First Amendment rights was a speech that allowed schools to suppress the speech of students critical of homosexuality. But since the Ninth Circuit undermined the notion that students have a First Amendment right to speak on such issues, it is hard to accept the argument that this is a violation of MariahÂ’s rights in any way. After all, the Ninth Circuit has more or less indicated that it will defer to school administrators in such instances, and they did indicate that they were seeking to avoid violence and disruption, just as the school had in the case in which the Ninth Circuit implicitly dispensed with the relevant Supreme Court precedent.

Ferraud sent Mariah's mother a letter dated Dec. 3 indicating the school's decision was more about Mariah's safety than about restricting free speech. She said district officials "were concerned about the potential disruption resulting from the fact that the shirt seemed to imply that those students who supported Proposition 8 were expressing `hate."'

And since many of those students were basing their position on Prop 8 on their religious views, and since at least some of those students would have been members of minority religions (Mormons and Muslims, among others), these students had every right to be left alone and not subjected to so-called hate speech, just as the judges ruled gay students had a similar right when the student in Harper v. Poway was banned from expressing “hateful” sentiments by wearing a shirt that read “Homosexuality is Shameful”. These members of minority faiths might have their poor psyches injured by such hateful words, just like the hypothetically-harmed homosexual kids in the earlier case. And while the fact that young Mariah made it through to sixth period with no disruption of the school day might seem compelling in arguing that the shirt caused no harm, Tyler Harper had made it through a substantial portion of the day without incident before his speech was suppressed by school authorities. If such facts are irrelevant in a case involving speech on one side of the gay issue, it should be equally irrelevant on the other as a matter of applying the law and Constitution equally.

Outside the Ninth Circuit, though, I would argue that Mariah should have every right to wear her shirt unmolested – and, indeed protected if necessary – by school authorities. If we are to teach our young people to be fully-informed and active citizens in a free society, both Mariah Jimenez and Tyler Harper OUGHT to be able to walk through the hallways of a school expressing diverse views of homosexuality and gay rights with the full support of teachers and administrators. In a world where Tinker v. Des Moines were a precedent which school authorities sought to uphold rather than undermine, actions like those of Jimenez and Harper would be seen as evidence that the schools had succeed rather than problems for administrators to deal with. Of course, in such a world we would view schools as a place which encouraged critical thinking and respectful self-expression rather than institutions in which teaching to the state minimum standards implicitly requires that No Child Gets Ahead.

By the way, let me state for the record that I do not fully agree (or disagree) with either studentÂ’s message. On the other hand, IÂ’d be proud to claim either as my student or my child, because each has engaged in an act of true patriotism by exercising their legitimate First Amendment rights and attempting to defend them appropriately when challenged by government authority. Each deserves better than they were given by their respective schools.

Posted by: Greg at 12:17 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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