Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District

• Article

• Talk

(Redirected from Tinker v. Des Moines )

Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, 393 U.S. 503 (1969), is a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court that recognized the First Amendment rights of students in U.S. public schools . The Tinker test , also known as the "substantial disruption" test, is still used by courts today to determine whether a school's interest in preventing disruption outweighs students' First Amendment rights. The Court famously opined, "It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate."[1] [2]

Contents

• 1 Background

  • 1.1 Legal precedents and issues

• 2 Lower courts

• 3 Decision

  • 3.1 Majority opinion

  • 3.2 Dissents

• 4 Legacy

  • 4.1 Subsequent jurisprudence

  • 4.2 Tinker Tour

• 5 See also

• 6 References

• 7 External links

Background

(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tinker_v._Des_Moines_Independent_Community_School_District&action=edit&section=1 "Edit section: Background")

Mary and John showing the black armbands which they wore to school

On December 16, 1965, five students in Des Moines, Iowa , decided to wear black armbands to school in protest of American involvement in the Vietnam War and supporting the Christmas Truce that was called for by Senator Robert F. Kennedy . The students were John F. Tinker (age 15), his siblings Mary Beth Tinker (13), Hope Tinker (11), and Paul Tinker (8), and their friend Christopher Eckhardt (16). The students wore the armbands to several schools in the Des Moines Independent Community School District (North High School for John, Roosevelt High School for Christopher, Warren Harding Junior High School for Mary Beth, elementary school for Hope and Paul).

The Tinker family had been involved in civil rights activism before the student protest. The Tinker children's mother, Lorena, was a leader of the Peace Organization in Des Moines.[3] Christopher Eckhardt and John Tinker attended a protest of the war the previous month in Washington, D.C.[4] The principals of the Des Moines schools learned of the plan and met before the incident occurred on December 16 to create a policy that schoolchildren wearing an armband would be asked to remove it immediately. Students violating the policy would be suspended and allowed to return to school only after agreeing to comply with it. The participants decided to violate this policy. Hope and Paul Tinker were not in violation of the policy, since it did not apply to elementary schools, and were not punished.[3] No violence or disruption was shown to have occurred due to the students wearing the armbands.[4] Mary Beth Tinker and Christopher Eckhardt were suspended from school for wearing the armbands on December 16 and John Tinker was suspended for the same reason the next day.

Legal precedents and issues

(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tinker_v._Des_Moines_Independent_Community_School_District&action=edit&section=2 "Edit section: Legal precedents and issues")

Previous decisions, such as _West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette _, established that students had some constitutional protections in public school. This case was the first time that the court set forth standards for safeguarding public school students' free speech rights . It involved symbolic speech , which was first recognized in _Stromberg v. California _.[5]

Lower courts

(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tinker_v._Des_Moines_Independent_Community_School_District&action=edit&section=3 "Edit section: Lower courts")

A suit was filed after the Iowa Civil Liberties Union approached the Tinker family, and the ICLU agreed to help with the lawsuit. Dan Johnston was the lead attorney on the case.[3]

The Des Moines Independent Community School District represented the school officials who suspended the students. The children's fathers filed suit in U.S. District Court, which upheld the Des Moines school board's decision.

A tie vote in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit meant that the U.S. District Court's decision continued to stand, which led the Tinkers and Eckhardts to appeal to the Supreme Court.

The only students involved in the lawsuit were Mary Beth Tinker, John Tinker, and Christopher Eckhardt.[3] During the case, the Tinker family received hate mail, death threats, and other hateful messages.[3]

The case was argued before the court on November 12, 1968. It was funded by Des Moines residents Louise Noun , who was the president of the Iowa Civil Liberties Union, and her brother, Joseph Rosenfield , a businessman.[6]

Decision

(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tinker_v._Des_Moines_Independent_Community_School_District&action=edit&section=4 "Edit section: Decision")

English Wikisource has original text related to this article:

**Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District **

Majority opinion

(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tinker_v._Des_Moines_Independent_Community_School_District&action=edit&section=5 "Edit section: Majority opinion")

The court's 7–2 decision in favor of the students held that the First Amendment applied to public schools, and that administrators would have to demonstrate constitutionally valid reasons for any specific regulation of speech in the classroom.[7] Justice Abe Fortas wrote the majority opinion, holding that the speech regulation at issue was "based upon an urgent wish to avoid the controversy which might result from the expression, even by the silent symbol of armbands, of opposition to this Nation's part in the conflagration in Vietnam." This decision made students and adults equal in terms of First Amendment rights while at school. _Bethel School District v. Fraser _ and _Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier _ later rewrote this implication, limiting the freedoms granted to students.[8]

The Court held that for school officials to justify censoring speech, they "must be able to show that [their] action was caused by something more than a mere desire to avoid the discomfort and unpleasantness that always accompany an unpopular viewpoint" and that the conduct that would "materially and substantially interfere with the requirements of appropriate discipline in the operation of the school."[9] The Court found that, by wearing armbands, the Tinkers did not cause disruption, and that their activity was constitutionally protected symbolic speech. The Court ruled that First Amendment rights were not absolute, and could be overridden if there was a "carefully restricted circumstance". Student speech that has the potential to cause disruption is not protected by Tinker.[[10]](https://en.wikipedia.org/

…