Pubdate: Sun, 18 Mar 2007
Source: Seattle Times (WA)
Copyright: 2007 The Seattle Times Company
Contact:  http://www.seattletimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/409
Author: Robert Barnes, The Washington Post
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/Bong+Hits+4+Jesus
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?225 (Students - United States)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Marijuana)

"BONG" BANNER FREE-SPEECH DISPUTE TO HIT SUPREME COURT TOMORROW

WASHINGTON -- The most important student free-speech conflict to 
reach the Supreme Court since the height of the Vietnam War hinges on 
a somewhat absurd, vaguely offensive, mostly nonsensical message of 
protest: "Bong Hits 4 Jesus."

That's the slogan high-school student Joseph Frederick fashioned in 
2002 with a 14-foot piece of paper and a $3 roll of duct tape. His 
goal was partly to get on TV as the Olympic torch passed through his 
town of Juneau, Alaska, and mostly to get under the skin of his 
disciplinarian principal, Deborah Morse, with whom he had a running feud.

It worked, at least the irritating-the-principal part. Morse crossed 
to Frederick's position across from the school and confiscated the 
banner and later suspended him for 10 days. Frederick said Morse 
tacked on the last five days when he paraphrased Thomas Jefferson's 
admonition that "speech limited is speech lost."

In the five years since, a classic conflict between a second-semester 
senior and his frazzled principal has spawned numerous lawsuits and 
conflicting court rulings.

A wide range of interested parties has assembled for what some see as 
an epic Supreme Court battle that will be heard Monday.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has been on Frederick's 
side from the start, joined by a diverse coalition of civil-rights, 
constitutional-law and religious organizations.

Kenneth Starr, the former special prosecutor of President Clinton, 
has volunteered his time to the Juneau School District, and school 
boards across the country, plus the Bush administration, are 
supporting Morse and the school district.

Morse v. Frederick asks the justices to weigh the court's famous 1969 
ruling that students "do not shed their constitutional rights to 
freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate" with more 
recent decisions acknowledging a school system's ability to enact 
rules that maintain order and protect other students from messages 
deemed harmful.

In this case, the school board maintains that Frederick's slogan 
encourages smoking marijuana. Other school districts have placed 
restrictions on clothes or speech believed to carry the potential of 
disruption or violence.

Both sides equate an adverse ruling with cataclysmic results.

The "extraordinarily broad claim" asserted by the government, said 
ACLU national legal director Steven Shapiro, "would in effect 
overrule the entire architecture of student-speech law that the 
Supreme Court has so carefully constructed over the past 40 years."

Morse's brief, written by Starr and a team of pro bono attorneys at 
the law firm of Kirkland and Ellis, said ratification of Frederick's 
victory in the appellate court would make all the more daunting "the 
vital task of teachers, administrators and volunteer school-board 
members in attending holistically to the needs of millions of 
students entrusted every school day to their charge."

Frederick was one of them, five years ago, though he was not a 
particularly happy student at Juneau-Douglas High School.

One day, he refused a vice principal's order to leave a student 
commons area where he was reading Albert Camus, and police were 
called. The next day, he remained in his seat while others stood for 
the Pledge of Allegiance and he was hauled to the principal's office.

He planned his ultimate protest for Jan. 24, 2002, the day the 
Olympic Torch was scheduled to pass through Juneau, part of a 
50-state relay in advance of the winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. 
Frederick said he'd seen the phrase "Bong Hits For Jesus" on a 
sticker on a snowboard.

"To me, it's absurdly funny," Frederick, now 23, said in a recent 
conference call with reporters. "The phrase was not important. I 
wasn't trying to say anything about religion, I wasn't trying to say 
anything about drugs, I was just trying to say something. I wanted to 
use my right to free speech, and I did it."

Frederick's case presents some unusual facts. For one thing, he was 
18 at the time of the event, and he was careful not to display his 
protest message on school grounds.

At least one nonstudent was among the group holding the banner and 
his lawyers contend that even if his message was considered 
pro-marijuana, debates about legalizing the drug are a legitimate 
topic of political discussion in Alaska, where the state Supreme 
Court has ruled adults have the right to possess small amounts of pot.

Even school officials acknowledged Frederick's actions were not 
disruptive. But the school board says Frederick's protest came at 
what was a school-sponsored event: the high school was released for 
the parade, and the cheerleaders and pep band entertained. "It was a 
field trip," Starr says, even if it occurred outside the school.

A district court judge dismissed Frederick's suit against Morse and 
the school board that backed her decision. But the U.S. Court of 
Appeals for the 9th Circuit said government officials cannot punish 
speech with which they disagree.

That court held Morse personally liable for violating Frederick's rights.

Morse is now an administrator with the Juneau School District. 
Frederick, meanwhile, has learned much about the legal system. He 
sued the Juneau police for a series of what he alleged were 
harassments that occurred after the banner incident, and he received 
a settlement from the city. As fate would have it, his father Frank 
worked for the company that insured the Juneau School District; he 
sued after he claimed he was fired for not pressuring his son to drop 
his lawsuit. A jury awarded him a nearly $200,000 settlement.

Joseph Frederick also was arrested as a Texas college student for 
distributing marijuana. "I never professed to be perfect or a saint," 
he said in the conference call.

[sidebar]

DEFINING FREE SPEECH

Free-speech rights of students and the limits school administrators 
may impose on them are defined in three cases:

Tinker v. Des Moines (Iowa) Independent Community School District 
(1969): Court held that students had a First Amendment right to 
protest the Vietnam War by wearing black armbands in class. "It can 
hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their 
constitutional rights of freedom of speech or expression at the 
schoolhouse gate," the majority opinion said.

Bethel (Wash.) School District v. Fraser (1986): The court said a 
student had no First Amendment right to give a "plainly offensive," 
sexually charged speech at a school assembly. The court said schools 
had a right to limit speech that would disrupt the educational 
mission of the school.

Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier (1988): Students don't have 
the right to publish stories, in this case on divorce and pregnancy, 
in a school-sponsored newspaper over the principal's objection. Such 
speech, the justices ruled, could be perceived as carrying the 
official sanction of school officials. 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake