Supreme Court turns away Bay Area students free-speech case

The U.S. Supreme Court denied an appeal Monday by high school students in Morgan Hill who were barred from wearing American flags on their T-shirts on Cinco de Mayo, a year after an angry confrontation between flag-waving Anglo and Mexican American students.

Heeding warnings in 2010 by students from both ethnic groups that clashes could erupt again, the principal at Live Oak High School told the students to either turn the U.S. flag shirts inside out or go home. Some reversed their shirts, others left, but three students and their parents sued the Morgan Hill Unified School District, claiming a violation of free speech. They cited a 1969 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that upheld students right to wear black armbands to class in a silent protest against the Vietnam War.

But the 1969 ruling also said school officials could limit student expression in order to prevent disruption of education or school activities. Federal courts said the Morgan Hill principal had taken reasonable steps to prevent possible violence, and the Supreme Court denied review of the students appeal Monday, without comment.

The Rutherford Institute, a libertarian organization representing the students, said the courts action was a blow to the First Amendment.

When public school students cant wear an American flag on a T-shirt because it might be disruptive, then free speech as weve known it is dead, the institutes president, John Whitehead, said in a statement.

The students also drew support from John and Mary Beth Tinker, the brother and sister whose Vietnam War protest in an Iowa high school led to the Supreme Courts 1969 ruling. In a brief that urged the court to take up the Morgan Hill case, the Tinkers said students speech on controversial subjects often provokes hostile and even potentially violent reactions and should nevertheless remain constitutionally protected.

But the court may have retreated somewhat from the First Amendment stance it took in the Tinker case. A later ruling upheld a school principals authority to censor a student newspaper to promote what the principal described as school values. Another ruling upheld an Alaska schools suspension of a student who unfurled a banner outside the campus reading Bong Hits 4 Jesus, a slogan that the court said could be interpreted as promoting drug use.

The Morgan Hill case arose in an ethnically charged atmosphere that dated from May 5, 2009, when a group of Mexican American students walked around with a Mexican flag to celebrate Cinco de Mayo, and a group of white students responded by hoisting a makeshift American flag up a tree, chanting USA and exchanging profanities and threats with the Latino youths.

A year later, after a confrontation between Latino students and three youths wearing U.S. flag shirts, school officials told the youths in the T-shirts to conceal the flags or go home. They issued no similar orders to students wearing Mexican flag colors to commemorate the holiday, saying there was no evidence that those youths were in danger.

In a 3-0 ruling in February 2014, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the students free-speech claims, saying the schools actions were tailored to avert violence and focused on student safety. Three conservative judges later argued unsuccessfully for a rehearing and accused their colleagues of catering to the will of the mob.

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Supreme Court turns away Bay Area students free-speech case