shine.yahoo.com/pare nting/court-okays-hi gh-school-ban-americ an-flag-t-17290 a case that pits individual rights against kids' safety, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Thursday that it was appropriate for school officials to ban students at a San Jose, California, area high school from wearing American flag T-shirts on Cinco de Mayo.
The May 5th holiday, popular in the United States but largely
unrecognized in Mexico, commemorates the 1862 Battle of Puebla and
celebrates Mexican culture, heritage, and pride. The ruling stems from a controversial incident in 2010
when five students were told by administrators at Live Oak High School
(which has a history of racial tension and gang violence) to either turn
their American flag T-shirts inside out or go home. In a unanimous
decision, the court cited two instances where students had been
threatened with violence for wearing the flag. In 2009, some students of
Mexican descent told an assistant principal they would "f--- up" other
kids who were chanting "USA" around a flag they had hung from a tree on
the school campus. The next year, students wearing the flag tees were warned by text messages and phone calls
that gang members would come to the school and beat them up. Because
only shirts with the American flag were targeted, school officials
didn't ban shirts bearing images of other countries' flags, including
the Mexican flag. In response to the ban, a group of parents sued the
district, alleging violation of the teens' First Amendment rights. The
school district has not responded to Yahoo Shine's request for comment.
The court pointed out that under previous law, it is indeed legal to restrict high school students' free speech because of safety concerns. The Live Oak dress code also states,
"The school has the right to request that any student dressing
inappropriately for school will change into other clothes, be sent home
to change, and/or be subject to disciplinary action." Writing for the
panel of three judges, 9th Circuit Judge M. Margaret McKeown stated,
"Our role is not to second-guess the decision to have a Cinco de Mayo
celebration or the precautions put in place to avoid violence. ... [The
events] made it reasonable for school officials to proceed as though the
threat of a potentially violent disturbance was real." However, some
parents are still threatening to take the case all the way to the
Supreme Court. "This is the United States of America," Kendall Jones,
whose son was one of the students banned from wearing a shirt depicting
the American flag, told the San Jose Mercury News. "The idea that it's offensive to wear patriotic clothing … regardless of what day it is, is unconscionable to me."
School clothing bans have become common across the country in recent years, as administrators have cracked down on everything from leggings to NRA T-shirts to UGGS. Last year a Michigan school told middle-schoolers who were wearing T-shirts
memorializing a friend who had died from leukemia to change tops or
cover up the friend's name printed on the shirt (administrators later
apologized and reversed their decision). Not surprisingly, the American
flag T-shirt case is particularly controversial and has strong
supporters on both sides of the issue.
The court ruling appears to be on firm ground because of legal precedent, but blogging about the case, Eugene Volokh,
a professor of law at UCLA and specialist in free speech, says it's
about far more than T-shirts and that there are some serious issues at
stake. "This is a classic 'heckler's veto' — thugs threatening to attack
the speaker, and government officials suppressing the speech to prevent
such violence," he wrote. "The school taught its students a simple
lesson: If you dislike speech and want it suppressed, then you can get
what you want by threatening violence against the speakers." However,
after the decision, school district superintendent Steve Betando said he
felt "relieved." From his point of view in the trenches of a challenged
school, the court gave administrators the power to avert potential harm
to their students. 4951