Monk, Constitutional scholar. Explore More Rights Topics. Rights Main Federalism is one of the most important and innovative concepts in the U. Learn More.
Your purchase supports PBS and helps make our programming possible. Shop PBS Amazon. Support your local PBS station in our mission to inspire, enrich, and educate. Stream the best of PBS. What is not clear is whether this presumption would be rebutted in light of a compelling interest in shielding children from speech that is against their best interests; parents forfeit some of their First Amendment rights by divorcing, and a court has an obligation to make the best child protective decision it can, even if it means considering factors that would be constitutionally immune from penalty outside the child custody context.
This article was originally published in Eugene Volokh is the Gary T. He has taught First Amendment law for over 20 years, has written a First Amendment casebook and has written several dozen law review articles on the First Amendment.
He has also argued over 30 First Amendment cases in state and federal appellate courts throughout the country. Beschle, Donald. Schneider, Carl. Kuhlmeier More importantly, schools can censor student speech which is likely to substantially disrupt school operations Tinker v. Therefore, speech is not quite as free inside schools as it is outside.
Des Moines See below for examples of how the First Amendment applies to schools in specific ways. The Supreme Court has ruled that student journalists have very limited rights when they write for school-sponsored publications such as school newspapers and yearbooks. The school can censor articles for many reasons, including because school officials think that the subject is inappropriate. Some courts have even said that schools can censor editorials because school officials disagree with the views expressed in them.
However, several states have laws which give greater protection to student journalists. A list of those states and links to descriptions of their legislation can be found here. Some schools have attempted to censor these publications and suppress off-campus speech they find offensive, disturbing, or unflattering.
However, courts have been willing to uphold school censorship of off-campus speech only in unusual circumstances in which the speech has a very high likelihood of substantially disrupting school such as by publishing answers to tests or harming particular persons such as by harassing or threatening them. Unlike student speech in school, student speech off campus cannot be punished just because it includes profanity, or advocates illegal drug use, or for any reason other than it is very likely to substantially disrupt school.
In particular, schools have limited ability to punish or censor off-campus speech about politics or religion. If an independent student publication is distributed on campus, school officials have a bit more power to confiscate or ban it, but only if there is a risk that it will cause substantial disruption of the school.
Students can help avoid conflict with school officials by ensuring their unofficial publications are produced and maintained separately from any school course and without school materials or teacher assistance. An AUP, which is often found in district guidelines or in a student handbook, sets out the rules and regulations governing student use of school computer networks. Hair , Dress, and Appearance. Since the Tinker case in , students, school administrators, and courts have struggled with the boundaries and limits of student dress and grooming requirements.
Beginning in the early s, the courts were inundated with cases that confronted the issue, and have found few clear answers.
The circuit courts remain split over the control school administrators can exercise with respect to student dress and grooming. The issue often is complicated by gender and guidelines that reinforce rigid binaries.
In one case, a school disciplined a boy for wearing an earring, although earrings are permitted under the dress code for girls. Other examples are hair length restrictions for boys but not girls, or dress requirements designed to enforce notions of modesty for girls but not boys.
Some public schools have required uniforms, but this has hardly solved the problem, as strict dress codes of this sort are often challenged. In contrast, gender-neutral guidelines about appropriate dress rarely result in challenges.
Gang Symbols and Insignia. Since gang members often identify themselves through clothes and insignia, principals have often turned to dress codes in an effort to discourage gang membership and activities.
Courts have generally held that these codes are valid. In recent years, there s been an increasing number of cases involving off-campus student speech which has effects on-campus. Often, that speech takes place on social media. Schools cannot punish students for profane speech that takes place off-campus except during a field trip, which courts consider part of the school.
Nor can they punish students for off-campus speech which advocates illegal drug use. However, schools can sometimes punish students for off-campus speech which has a strong chance of coming on campus and disrupting school, such as racist speech when the school has a history of racial conflict. And, schools can of course punish students for off-campus speech that harasses students or school employees, or which threatens violence against the school. Censorship is the suppression of speech or other expression that the censor a person or institution with the power to suppress speech does not like.
Parents and community groups often try to remove school materials that discuss sexuality, religion, race, or ethnicity—whether directly or indirectly. Others think schools should not allow discussion about sexual orientation or gender identities, and other people call for eliminating The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the English curriculum because they think it is racist.
As these examples show, demands for censorship originate across the entire spectrum of religious, ideological, and political opinion. When people ask schools to censor materials, schools must balance their First Amendment duties against other concerns, such as maintaining the integrity of the educational program, meeting state education requirements, respecting the judgments of professional staff, and addressing deeply held beliefs in students and members of the community.
In dealing with challenges to materials, educators are on the strongest ground if they are mindful of two fundamental principles that the Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized: 1 schools have broad power to decide what and how to teach, as long as their decisions are based on sound educational principles and are aimed at improving student learning; and 2 the decisions that are most vulnerable to legal challenge are those that are motivated by hostility to an unpopular or controversial idea, or by the desire to force acceptance of a particular viewpoint.
That means that courts will often uphold a decision to remove a book or to discipline a teacher, if the decision serves legitimate educational objectives, including administrative efficiency.
However, it is equally true that schools which reject demands for censorship are on equally strong or stronger grounds. As the Supreme Court stated in its Mahanoy decision, schools have a strong interest in protecting unpopular expression, in exposing students to a wide range of views, and in giving students the opportunity to discuss those views. Therefore, it is extremely unlikely that a school official who relied on these principles and refused to accede to pressures to censor something with educational value would ever be ordered by a court of law to do so.
Schools make decisions all the time about which books and materials to include in or exclude from the curriculum. Hence, they are not violating the First Amendment every time they cross a book off a reading list. However, they could be acting unconstitutionally if they decide to remove a book solely because of hostility to the ideas it contains.
For example, administrators and faculty might agree to take discussion of evolution out of the second grade curriculum because the students lack sufficient background to understand it, and decide to introduce it in the fourth grade instead. As long as they are not motivated by hostility to the idea of teaching about evolution, this would not ordinarily be problematic.
The choice to include the material in the fourth grade curriculum tends to demonstrate this was a pedagogical judgment, not an act of censorship. However, not every situation is that simple. Often, it becomes clear that their concern is not that students will not understand the material, but that they simply do not want the students to have access to that type of information.
If professional educators can show a legitimate pedagogical rationale for maintaining such material in the curriculum, it is unlikely that an effort to remove it will be successful. Censorship based on individual sensitivities and concerns restricts the world of knowledge available to students.
Studies on the relationship between media violence and real violence are the subject of considerable debate. Children have been shown TV programs with violent episodes in a laboratory setting and then tested for "aggressive" behavior. Some of these studies suggest that watching TV violence may temporarily induce "object aggression" in some children such as popping balloons or hitting dolls or playing sports more aggressively but not actual criminal violence against another person.
There is no definitive answer. But all scientists agree that statistical correlations between two phenomena do not mean that one causes the other. Japanese TV and movies are famous for their extreme, graphic violence, but Japan has a very low crime rate -- much lower than many societies in which television watching is relatively rare.
What the sudies reveal on the issue of fictional violence and real world aggression is -- not much. The only clear assertion that can be made is that the relationship between art and human behavior is a very complex one. Violent and sexually explicit art and entertainment have been a staple of human cultures from time immemorial. Many human behavioralists believe that these themes have a useful and constructive societal role, serving as a vicarious outlet for individual aggression.
The Supreme Court has interpreted the First Amendment's protection of artistic expression very broadly. It extends not only to books, theatrical works and paintings, but also to posters, television, music videos and comic books -- whatever the human creative impulse produces. Two fundamental principles come into play whenever a court must decide a case involving freedom of expression. The first is "content neutrality"-- the government cannot limit expression just because any listener, or even the majority of a community, is offended by its content.
In the context of art and entertainment, this means tolerating some works that we might find offensive, insulting, outrageous -- or just plain bad. The second principle is that expression may be restricted only if it will clearly cause direct and imminent harm to an important societal interest. The classic example is falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater and causing a stampede.
Even then, the speech may be silenced or punished only if there is no other way to avert the harm. Whatever influence fictional violence has on behavior, most expert believe its effects are marginal compared to other factors.
Even small children know the difference between fiction and reality, and their attitudes and behavior are shaped more by their life circumstances than by the books they read or the TV they watch. In , the U. Surgeon General's Advisory Committee on Television and Social Behavior released a page report, "Television and Growing Up: The Impact of Televised Violence," which concluded, "The effect [of television] is small compared with many other possible causes, such as parental attitudes or knowledge of and experience with the real violence of our society.
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