Free Speech Rights, The Establishment Clause, And Their Incorporation Under The 14th Amendment

Constitutional issues in this case are the student is not given his First Amendment rights and also the Due Process a Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The right to freedom of speech and due process are both laws that anyone should be following and anyone making a decision toward a case needs to consider these because they are apart of the amendments and rights to the people. However, in this case they ruled that Bethel High School was not wrong and didn't take away his

Issue: Whether the principal’s censorship of the school paper violated the journalism student’s freedom of speech rights under the First Amendment.

The decision in this case seems to have left public school students’ free speech rights in an ambiguous state. The Justices in support of the majority opinion—Justices Thomas, Alito, Kennedy, and Scalia—were thus

First, the court had to determine if the constitutional right to freedom of speech applied to students at school. Secondly, the court had to determine if the students had actually demonstrated speech. Lastly, the court had to determine to what degree did the school extinguish the students’ speech in conjunction with school’s expectations. In 1969, in a 7-2 majority vote in favor of Tinker (students), the United States Supreme Court ruled, “It can hardly be argued,” declared the Court, “that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech and expression at the schoolhouse gate” (Imber et al p83).

S. Court granted review of the case. Milford Central School’s arguments are that Good News Club is in violation of the Establishment Clause because the organizations purpose is religion and the students, especially the elementary students, would not be able to distinguish the religion instruction from the school instruction. In addition, the school has a “limited public forum” and cannot accept every application or open its doors every time an organization wants it to ("Find Law", 2015). The school related their argument to previous cases, such as, Engel v. Vitale Lee v. Weisman Sante Fe (school prayer), Peck v. Upsher County Board (no bibles in elementary schools), and Widmar v. Vincent (younger students are impressionable). Good News Club’s argument is that the school allows non-related organizations to “use the facilities based on expressive activities.” The club has a neutral viewpoint and is specific on the subject matter of promoting moral values. The club does not violate the Establishment Clause because they are neutral, viewpoint is private and not a reflection of the school, and the club is not endorsed by the school. Additionally, the club is promoting the community to put themselves above others and that is discriminated against its religious speech. The previous cases that the club uses to support their argument are Lambs Chapel v. Moriches School District (religious viewpoint but not religious purpose), Rosenberger b. Rector and

This case is about public teachers’ ability to choose their speech was being violated due to state involved agency requires public employees to pay union “agency” fees include who are non-member of this agency .This court should reverse the lower court decision and hold that mandatory agency fees that is an equal portion of the bargaining costs violates public employees’ freedom of choose the speech that is protected by first amendment for two reasons. First, people who opted- out or non-members were required to pay fees for union, and second, fees were automatically taking out from their paychecks.

Levine, M. D. (1984). Reshelving the First Amendment: Board of Education, Island Trees Union Free School District No. 26 v. PICO. Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review, 17,

Des Moines is an important case for free speech in the United States. It affirms that students don’t lose their rights when they go to school. However, it also affirmed that schools can limit speech that “materially disrupts classwork or involves substantial disorder or invasion of the rights of others” (Tinker v. Des Moines, 1969). However, the Court has ruled that there are times that the school can limit speech. In 1986, the Supreme Court ruled in Bethel v. Fraser that students can be disciplined for using vulgar and offensive language in school (Gooden, Eckes, Mead, McNeal, & Torres, 2013, p. 25). This case differed from Tinker v. Des Moines because that case was about political speech or expression. Another example of where school can limit the First Amendment is school sponsored newspapers. This was affirmed by the Court in Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier (1988). That decision stated that schools can reasonably limit the content of school-sponsored newspapers (Gooden, Eckes, Mead, McNeal, & Torres, 2013, p.

Explain the tension between the establishment clause and the free exercise clause of the First amendment. Support your explanation with at least one example. First we must understand the purpose of each of these clauses of the First Amendment. A common misunderstanding of the Establishment Clause is that it safeguards individual rights. In reality the purpose of the Establishment Clause is to limit the government’s power in respect to legislating on matters that deals with "respecting an establishment of religion.". The Free Exercise Clause has only a sole purpose, the safeguarding of individual rights, specifically related to religion.

This document supports limiting online student speech because the court ruled that even though it happened out of school, the school’s reason was strong enough to justify their actions toward K.K.

The Constitutional Issue: This issue violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth amendment because segregated schools for people of race are unconstitutional and unequal.

The last century has seen a great deal of governmental interaction with religious groups and practices. As a result, the use of litigation to settle these disputes has been extremely prevalent. Perhaps, the first trial to outline the Establishment Clause was Everson v. Board of Education. The court ruled in a 5-4 decision upholding a New Jersey program that covered the cost of bus transportation for students attending private schools (Rossum, 281). Although the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the religious students, it unanimously agreed that the Establishment Clause was designed to serve as a separating force between church and state.

Due to the United States’ Supreme Court reviewing religious cases, on average, more than once a year since 1962, the Establishment Clause and Free exercise Clause have taken on a whole new meaning in public schools. Now, the two clauses are disjoined. The Establishment Clause has become the more favored one of the two, compared to the Free Exercise Clause, which is almost obsolete. Today, students

Cases that involve the First Amendment in school systems have always been around but the issue of finding a balance with these freedoms is

The dissent’s argument was that if the Program is not delivering an “education” by North Carolina standards, then it is wrong to characterize it as a “public purpose.” The majority opinion leaned heavily on the inferential logic that education will always serve a public purpose, and, therefore, the Program obviously qualified as a public purpose because it claims to serve an educational goal. The dissent stressed that the majority missed a critical step in determining whether the Program could constitutionally qualify as a public purpose. Justice Hudson noted that, “while students enrolled in private school may be receiving a fine education,” in the eyes of their parents, “if taxpayer money is spent on a private school education that does not prepare them to function in and to contribute to our state’s society, that spending cannot be for ‘public purposes only.’