Frosstbyte

When you are a minor and in a school, your constitutional rights are somewhat abridged. Lots of schools have rules against kids wearing shirts with swear words and advertisements about drugs and alcohol on them because they are considered disruptive. I knew of one person when I was in high school who was suspended for wearing a shirt with a racial slur on it. Is this somehow different?

I mean, sure, the wording is relatively "polite" insofar as it doesn't say "God condemns all you ass-fucking fags to burn in hell," but the message is essentially the same.

The first amendment right to free speech is not absolute and does not protect you from all consequences of your exercise of free speech. It says "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech . . ." It says nothing about a school making a rule that you can't wear t-shirts that are offensive. Try showing up to a client meeting in an office wearing a bikini, covered in feces and hungover. If you did and got fired, you'd have a tough case for saying that your employers had violated your first amendment rights.

Codes of conduct exist all over the place. Public schools have them and they are much more strict than what the first amendment allows. This kid violated that code of conduct (I'd assume knowingly) and got busted. Seems pretty clear to me. The ruling doesn't say he can't wear it at home or on the street or in a park or to church or that it must be burned as offensive to all good Americans. It says that this t-shirt violated this school's rules and those rules allow for a constitutional abridgement of first amendment rights under Tinker. Every court reading that decision subsequently would read it that narrowly. He didn't make it a rule that no one can wear t-shirts that criticize gay lifestyles.

There are plenty of people in the government right now that you should be worried about infringing on your constitutional rights. Reinhardt's upholding of a school rule intended to prevent people from wearing inappropriate and offensive clothing in the class room probably isn't the one to be going after.