Washington – A high school senior’s 14-foot banner proclaiming “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” gave the Supreme Court a provocative prop for a lively argument Monday about the extent of schools’ control over student speech.
If the justices conclude Joseph Frederick’s homemade sign was a pro-drug message, they are likely to side with principal Deborah Morse. She suspended Frederick in 2002 when he unfurled the banner across the street from school in Juneau, Alaska.
“I thought we wanted our schools to teach something, including something besides just basic elements, including the character formation and not to use drugs,” Chief Justice John Roberts said Monday.
But the court could rule for Frederick if it determines that he was, as he has contended, conducting a free-speech experiment using a nonsensical message that contained no pitch for drug use.
“It sounds like just a kid’s provocative statement to me,” Justice David Souter said.
Students in public schools don’t have the same rights as adults, but neither do they leave their constitutional protections at the schoolhouse gate, as the court said in a landmark speech- rights ruling from the Vietnam era.
Morse, now a Juneau schools administrator, was at the court Monday. Frederick, teaching and studying in China, was not.
Former independent counsel Kenneth Starr, whose Kirkland and Ellis law firm is representing Morse for free, argued that the justices should defer to the judgment of the principal. Morse reasonably interpreted the banner as a pro-drug message, despite what Frederick intended, Starr said.
School officials are perfectly within their rights to curtail student speech that advocates drug use, he said.
Starr, joined by the Bush administration, also asked the court to adopt a broad rule that could essentially give public schools the right to clamp down on any speech with which they disagree.
That argument did not appear to have widespread support among the justices.
Douglas Mertz of Juneau, Frederick’s lawyer, struggled to keep the focus away from drugs.
“This is a case about free speech. It is not a case about drugs,” Mertz said.
A decision is expected by July.
