Significance: This ruling stated that certain kinds of nonverbal expression are protected by the First Amendment if they closely resemble pure speech. Such expression on school grounds can be punished only if it disrupts the educational process.
Background: In December 1965 a group of adults and students in Des Moines, Iowa, planned to wear black armbands during the holiday season to protest the Vietnam War. This plan became known to the school district, which—only two days before the students’ planned action—adopted a policy prohibiting the wearing of armbands. When three teenage students—Mary Beth Tinker, John Tinker, and Chris Eckhardt—wore armbands to school, they were suspended. The students took the case to court, claiming that their First Amendment right to free speech had been violated by the suspensions.
Decision: This case was argued on November 12, 1968, and decided on February 24, 1969, by a vote of 7 to 2. Justice Abe Fortas spoke for the Court, which ruled that certain nonverbal forms of expression are protected under the First Amendment. Justice Hugo Black, in his dissenting opinion, judged that the armbands had in fact disrupted the educational process and therefore should be punishable.
Excerpt from the Opinion of the Court: “A student’s rights . . . do not embrace merely the classroom hours. When he is in the cafeteria, or on the playing field, or on the campus during the authorized hours, he may express his opinions, even on controversial subjects like the conflict in Vietnam, if he does so without ‘materially [actually] and substantially [greatly] interfer[ing] with the requirements of appropriate discipline in the operation of the school’ and without colliding with the rights of others. . . . But conduct by the student, in class or out of it, which for any reason—whether it stems from time, place, or type of behavior—materially disrupts classwork or involves substantial disorder or invasion of the rights of others is, of course, not immunized [protected] by the constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech.”
