WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court agreed Friday to decide whether a high school student had a free-speech right to unfurl a banner that read "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" at a school-sponsored event.
A ruling on the issue, due early next year, is expected to clarify the extent to which school officials can control slogans on banners, T-shirts and the like at school events. In recent years, disputes have arisen over messages involving religion, guns, gays and drugs on T-shirts worn by students.
In March, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled that school officials may not "punish and censor non-disruptive" speech by students at school-sponsored events simply because they object to the message. That decision cleared the way for a student to win damages from a principal in Juneau, Alaska, who had torn down the "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" banner.
Joseph Frederick had unfurled the sign on the street outside the school in 2002, as the torch for that year's Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City passed by. Students were released from classes to watch the event, and Frederick apparently hoped the banner would be seen on television.
Principal Deborah Morse suspended Frederick for 10 days.
Frederick sued Morse, alleging her actions violated his right to freedom of speech protected by the 1st Amendment. A federal judge in Alaska rejected the claim by Frederick, now a student at the University of Idaho, but he won before the 9th Circuit.
In August, former U.S. Solicitor Gen. Kenneth W. Starr and his law firm took up the case free of charge and appealed to the Supreme Court on behalf of the principal and the Juneau school board.
In a brief filed in the case, Starr said the 9th Circuit's ruling would create "a dangerous precedent [that] is deeply alarming to school administrators across the country." The decision would open the administrators to being personally sued for prohibiting "pro-drug messages" at school events, said Starr, now the dean of the Pepperdine University School of Law.
The justices said they would hear the case, Morse vs. Frederick, in February.
The line between a student's right to speak freely and school officials' authority to exercise control at school events long has been hazy.
During the Vietnam War, the high court said students did not "shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate." That ruling, in Tinker vs. Des Moines School District, upheld students' rights to wear black armbands to protest the war.
