WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court has denied an appeal from former California high school students who were ordered to turn their American flag T-shirts inside out during a celebration of the Cinco de Mayo holiday at school.
The justices did not comment Monday in leaving in place an appellate ruling that found that school officials acted appropriately because their concerns about racial violence outweighed students’ freedom of expression rights. Administrators feared the American-flag shirts would enflame the passions of Latino students celebrating the Mexican holiday.
The onetime students at Live Oak High School in Morgan Hill, California, argued that school officials gave a “heckler’s veto” to the objecting students.
The brother and sister who won a landmark Vietnam era student speech case at the Supreme Court also supported the appeal.
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Could they have gone to a crowded assembly with t-shirts bearing pictures of a fire?
(Of course, *that would have been clever, not something intended only to say fck you and your foreign holiday! You want to do something about it?)
“License they mean when they cry, Liberty!”
J. Milton.
Let us face it, quite often people like this want the right to do anything they want to do without repercussions. The High School administration was protecting this young man from the worst consequences of his actions. The problem is, he does not believe that the worst possible outcome from his decision could ever happen even though it could.
Go to any bar on May 5th and you’ll note that we too in the US celebrate the holiday.
Fore sure. “Worst case” never happens, right?
LOL. All those Catholics on the Supreme Court – letting the school have authority over what students wear is in their DNA.
More seriously, the school seemed to have easily met the light burden required to show that their decision was based on more than the concern that someone would be offended by the shirts.
Courts have long given schools a lot of leeway on matters of safety.