Submitted by admin on Wed, 2007-03-21 08:00. ::
The precise meaning of Joseph Frederick's homemade, 14ft banner proclaiming "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" may have been unclear. Was he suggesting, for instance, that a lungful of marijuana brings you closer to God? Was he somehow saying that Jesus would have approved of recreational use of cannabis?
Whatever his message, the head teacher at Mr Frederick's high school did not approve when he and his friends unfurled their flag as the 2002 Winter Olympic torch passed by. Deborah Morse not only tore down the sign but suspended the then 18-year-old student for five days. When he refused to tell her which other students were involved in the stunt and claimed his constitutional rights were being abused, she doubled his suspension. And there the matter might have ended had the student from Juneau, Alaska, not sued Ms Morse, claiming damages. One court ruled against him, but an appeals court said that his case should be heard. And this week the matter came before the US Supreme Court in Washington, forcing the justices to consider whether Mr Frederick's banner and its message were protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution, which guarantees free speech.
When the court listened to initial presentations on Monday, it appeared there was a division among the justices. Chief Justice John Roberts said: "I thought we wanted our schools to teach something, including something besides just basic elements, including the formation of character and not to use drugs."
But Justice David Souter suggested otherwise. "It sounds like just a kid's provocative statement to me," he said. "It's political speech, it seems to me. I don't see what it disrupts."
Meanwhile, Justice Stephen Breyer sought to find some middle ground. A ruling for Mr Frederick, he said, could result in students "testing limits all over the place in the high schools". At the same time, a decision against him "may really limit people's rights on free speech".
Mr Frederick, now 24, is currently living and teaching in China, having graduated from Idaho State University. Contacted yesterday by The Independent, he declined to answer questions about the case, but earlier told reporters that his banner was intended as a joke. "I conveyed this to the principal by explaining that it was intended to be funny, subjectively interpreted by the reader, and most importantly an exercise in my inalienable right to free speech," he said.
It was, he added, "a free speech experiment conducted at a time when I felt free speech was [being eroded] in America ... The phrase Bong hits 4 Jesus was never meant to have any substantive meaning, and it was certainly not intended as a drug or religious message."
His lawyer, Douglas Mertz, insisted that the case was not about drugs. He told the court: "This is a case about free speech. It is not a case about drugs."
Mr Mertz urged the court to take into consideration a 1969 ruling which declared that students do not "shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate". That decision allowed students to wear black armbands in class to protest against the Vietnam War.
Ms Morse is being represented by Kenneth Starr, the former special prosecutor who investigated former president Bill Clinton in the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal. He said she had acted in accordance with the school's anti-drug mission. "Illegal drugs and the glorification of the drug culture are profoundly serious problems for our nation," he told the court.
The Bush administration has also become involved in the case, arguing that public schools do not have to tolerate a message inconsistent with their educational mission. But this argument received a knock-back from one of the court's more conservative justices, Antonin Scalia. He told the administration's lawyer that he found Ms Morse's argument "very, very disturbing" on the grounds that schools could choose to define their educational mission so broadly as to suppress political speech and speech expressing fundamental student values.
A number of conservative groups that might normally ally themselves with the administration have found themselves backing Mr Frederick, out of concern that a ruling for Ms Morse would also allow schools clamp down on religious expression. The court is expected to rule on the case in June.
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