The Importance Of Freedom Of Speech

that student or teachers may not use schools as a platform to exercise free speech and in the case

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.

Students are protected by the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment right granting the freedom of speech. However those freedoms are limited as Justice Fortas explains as follows:

First off, limiting students’ online speech is unconstitutional. The first amendment clearly states, “Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech…” Which says that, for the most part, we can say whatever we want. In Gitlow v. New York the Supreme Court decided that first amendment applies to other levels of government, including public schools. What all this amounts too is that public schools are required by the constitution to protect their students’ freedom of speech. So, if a school was to limit any student’s online speech, the school is entirely abridging his/her rights.

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.

Citizens in America are born with a various amount of rights. One of these rights include the freedom of speech and expression. However, school administrators have the ability to restrict a student’s expression. The Supreme Court Cases ‘Bethel School District v. Fraser’ and ‘Frederick V. Morse’ gave schools the right for the administrators to discipline children when they see fit. Students should be able to express themselves in any way without fearing that their school administrators will discipline

To avoid disturbance and disruption and to create and maintain a safe learning environment, public schools often adopt policies that forbid certain acts on the part of students. Included in many of these policies are prohibitions on hate speech. The opinion of the court in Tinker v. Des Moines (1969) broadly stated that students retain their first amendment rights when they enter the school, but the breadth of that statement is not without limit. Schools may narrowly curtail free speech rights to the extent necessary to maintain good

“Over the years, courts have ruled that college officials may set up reasonable rules to regulate the ‘time, place and manner” that the free speech can occur, as long as the rules are “content neutral,’ meaning they apply equally to all sides of issues” (Fisher, 2008). Speech codes and free speech zones on campus do exist for many reasons: many of the causes or topics that students or others looking to interact with students take up are controversial and can frequently take on less of an academic or social justice overtone and more of a hateful one. Hate speech is the greatest threat to freedom of speech on college campuses, and the limitations colleges and universities put on student’s verbal freedoms are largely in place as efforts to avoid it. Religion, in particular, is a hot topic on campuses and it has an unfortunate tendency to become more aggressive and argumentative than universities would like. However, under the First Amendment, individuals do have a right to speech that the listener disagrees with and to speech that is offensive and hateful. It’s always easier to defend someone’s right to say something with which you agree. But in a free society, you also have a duty to defend speech to which you may strongly object.

I further believe that in order to teach children, school districts need a certain amount of authority and structure to keep students safe and effectively teach them. School districts need to provide a positive learning environments that includes free speech for both students and teachers for optimum learning. However, I have concerns that school regulations could have far reaching affects not originally intended and when school's regulations are not applied equitably. I agree with the Supreme Court's descending decision in this case and the District Court's decision that the action of the school authorities was reasonable.

Finally, the last reason why schools shouldn’t limit students’ online speech is the Letter of The U.S. Education Department explains what they consider harassment. In document G it states that “harassment is based on race, color, national origin, sex, or disability”. To me this means that if I state my opinion on anything as long as I’m not saying anything that violates that rule. Such as how they dress or even an opinion about your teacher, the school can't do anything about it. If we aren't violating any rules we should not be punished.

No matter what people do, everybody will have their own opinions on things and will have their ways of how they want to communicate it to other people. The different communications involve politics, problems, religion, talking over the phone, etc. In You’ve Been Warned: Speech Under Fire, it says, “A majority of college students believe universities should restrict which kinds of expression are allowed on campuses”(Robby Soave). There is a lot of talk that happens on college campus’ that offend people and even students believe that we should be limited on the things that they say. Another issue that has occurred with college campus freedom of speech is said by Catherine Rampell when a college professor was speaking of her opinions politically and a student had recorded her in the classroom. That student had posted it on the internet where it had gone viral and even got onto Fox News where they referred to the words she told the students to be an assault. This professor received threats and riots to get her fired which required her to flee her state for safety. When she was teaching her class and claiming her opinions it was obvious that she was a liberal so according to the Knight Foundation Survey, it claims that, “colleges should be able to restrict campus speech that expresses ‘political views that are upsetting or

I’m in favor for the strict interpretation of the laws and rights in the case within the school the students have certain amount of free speech but when they are not in school they can speak what they want. For writing about pregnancy and divorce in the school newspaper that there should be certain limitation for how much they can write about those topics. The people do have the right of free speech but when you are in a school setting there is certain amount that the administrations will the students to have. For the reason that I have chosen the strict interpretation is because even though that the students may not have as

478 U.S. 675, 683 (1986). In Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier, the Court found that schools may restrict school-sponsored speech when the regulation is done in line with the school’s educational mission. 484 U.S. 260, 273 (1988). In the latest student speech decision, Morse v. Frederick, the Court found that a student may be disciplined for speech outside of the schoolhouse gate, at a school-endorsed function for speech promoting the use of illegal drugs. 551 U.S. 393, 397 (2007). Without a bright-line ruling from the Supreme Court, the circuits split on whether Tinker and its progeny are applicable to off-campus speech. Thomas v. Bd. of Educ., Granville Cent. Sch. Dist., 607 F.2d 1043, 1053 (2d Cir. 1979)(finding school authorities may not discipline students for satirical speech done outside of school); Boucher v. Sch. Bd. of Greenfield, 134 F.3d 821, 829 (7th Cir. 1998)(finding that the relevant test of applying Tinker is whether administrators believe the speech will disrupt school activities).

Many college students today might say, “Stick and stones may break my bones, but words really offend me, so you can’t say that.” These students would be wrong legally to prevent others from freely speaking their minds in public, but in a college classroom they would be awarded.

By the same token, student speech that is used to attack another student, denies the student the right to life, meaning that the speaker’s words should be restricted.