Hazelmeier Case Study

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

I, Zuleisha Ame Yniguez, write this opinion to dissent with the majority opinion on the case of Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier.

I, Andrew Coble, write this opinion to dissent with the majority opinion on the case of Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier.

The court concluded that school officials are not in violation of a offending a student’s First Amendment Rights if they stop the student from expressing views that the officials feel promotes the use of drugs.

The act of the School District in suspending the students clearly showed a serious impediment of the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth. All students who petitioned were quiet and passive, neither disrupting nor interfering with school activities and the rights of other students—which makes their symbolic speech protected under the Constitution. What the students were protesting against accounts for their expression of opinion, which is again protected under the First and Fourteenth Amendments. Since this case, the Supreme Court has issued decisions that have given school administrators more power to regulate student conduct. Nevertheless, the Tinker decision changed the way students seek to exercise their First Amendment rights

In this text, the case hinges on whether the students created a disturbance. There was a fear that they might create one, but since they never did, the court held that their self-expression was protected.

When it comes to expression, a school may place limitations on clothes or actions if they are deemed disruptive. Notably in Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier, students who wished to present their newspaper to the school were forbidden by the principal as it involved names and situations that could disrupt learning. The club sued the school, claiming it was limiting freedom of speech and press. In Article II of Hazelwood v Kuhlmeier states, “We hold that educators do not offend the First Amendment by exercising control over

Maria A. Cardona, write this opinion to support the majority opinion on the case of T.M v. State of Florida.

[A student] may express his [or her] opinions, even on controversial subjects…if he [or she] does so without materially and substantially interfering with the requirements of appropriate discipline in the operation of the school and without colliding with the rights of others. But conduct by the student, in class or out of it, which for any reason – whether it stems from time, place, or type of behavior – materially disrupts classwork or involves substantial disorder or invasion of the rights of others is, of course, not immunized by the constitutional

Hazelwood East High School’s newspaper, The Spectrum, was sent to the Principal to be proofread. The journalism II class had constructed two articles that consisted of stories from teen pregnant girls and the other about a student’s parent’s divorce. This was planned to be released on May 13th, 1983. The principal prohibited those pages from being published because he thought it was too inappropriate for school. He feared that the girls’ names would be revealed even though they were changed. He also thought that the father should be informed on the article and should be given the option on stating an argument. It was also too late for the pages to be edited so he cut them out of the newspaper all together. The class thought that their principal

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all students will have the opportunity to work much harder and it will be easier for the students to retain the information. This will improve their grades significantly. All we are asking is just to cut the workload just a little bit. If this were to happen students will have better health and will be ready

I agree with the decision of Tinker because the protest did not interrupt the teachings of the school. The the majority opinion agrees that if the students’ First Amendment does not interrupt the teachings of the school, it's okay. The dissenting opinion by Hugo Black says “The truth is that a teacher of kindergarten, grammar school , or high school pupils no more carries into a school with him a complete right to freedom of speech and expression that an anti-Catholic or anti-Semite carries with him a complete freedom of speech and religion into a Catholic church or Jewish synagogue”. This argument doesn’t work because both a place of religion and school have different purposes. An anti-Catholic would interpret the teachings of a Catholic church. While all that Tinker did was wear a black armband that caused no disturbance in the teachings of the school. The ruling for Bethel v. Fraser is correct because Frasers use of sexual innuendo was to a crowd who was unaware. The court ruled, saying “A high school assembly or classroom is no place for a sexually explicit monologue directed towards an unsuspecting audience of teenage students”. I agree with the decision since the audience were not aware of what was going to happen as. Around 600 14 year olds were present for the speech.

Everyone in America should be guaranteed the freedom of speech granted by The Constitution. In 1988, the court ruled in Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier that schools \could limit freedom of speech in school if they had “educational concerns” (Jacobs). The problem is that “educational concerns” is too vague and school districts are able to use this as a loophole to get away with removing articles that do not need to be removed. Often, the concern is based on perception and image more than anything else. Angela Riley’s article “20 years later: Teachers reflect on Supreme Court’s Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier ruling” quotes Frank LoMonte, executive director of

The student felt that this was unfair and that it did not follow the first amendment rights to freedom of expression and association, so he pushed back and challenged the school by taking the situation to court (Meyer, 2009).

Separate from any concerns over bias, as the article had been written as a clear editorial, I was completely unsure of whether it was appropriate to broadcast opinions that could cause problems for other people. However, I couldn’t stop thinking that was wrong. Even if the entire system had been disrupted, even a system as small as school spirit and sports games, it went against our duty to better the world when we hid behind the majority opinion. It’s our responsibility to keep challenging, and pointing out, and acting against what was broken in the hope that it would become better. We kept publishing those controversial articles, every issue without fail, in an endeavor to make those around us consider what we have to gain when we do not resign ourselves to