finding that school district had authority to impose sanctions on student in response to his offensively lewd and indecent speech, which was not protected by the First Amendment, and noting that the role and purpose of the public school system is to inculcate the fundamental values of "habits and manners of civility,” including tolerance of divergent political and religious views
How later courts described this case
- finding that school district had authority to impose sanctions on student in response to his offensively lewd and indecent speech, which was not protected by the First Amendment, and noting that the role and purpose of the public school system is to inculcate the fundamental values of "habits and manners of civility,” including tolerance of divergent political and religious views
- stating that the Court’s student-speech precedents “obviously do not [apply] outside of the school environment” and also observing that if the plaintiff in Fraser “had given the speech [for which he was punished] outside of the school environment, he could not have been penalized simply because [school] officials considered his language to be inappropriate”
- holding that the school district’s discipline of a student for delivering a sexually explicit though not legally obscene speech at a school assembly was constitutional and that the school was entitled to dissociate itself from the speech to demonstrate that vulgarity was inconsistent with the fundamental values of public school education
- recognizing that, in the lower schools context, "[g]iven the school's need to be able to impose disciplinary sanctions for a wide range of unanticipated conduct disruptive of the educational process, the school disciplinary rules need not be as detailed as a criminal code which imposes criminal sanctions"
Written by the judges who cited it.
Later courts went against this
Declined to follow by Guiles v. Marineau, 461 F.3d 320 (2006)
We disagree with the district judge that Fraser governs this case.
Distinguished
Distinguished by Bwa v. Farmington R-7 School Dist., 508 F. Supp. 2d 740 (2007)
Here, Fraser is inapplicable because displaying the Confederate flag is not patently offensive.
Distinguished by Guiles ex rel. Guiles v. Marineau, 461 F.3d 320 (2006)
We disagree with the district judge that Fraser governs this case.
Distinguished by Lacks v. FERGUSON REORGANIZED SCHOOL DIST., R-2, 936 F. Supp. 676 (1996)
Dist. No. 403 v. Fraser, 478 U.S. 675, 106 S.Ct. 3159, 92 L.Ed.2d 549 (1986), are distinguishable from the present case.
Distinguished by David G. Chandler Ethan R. Depweg v. McMinnville School District Thomas Chapman Mike Hyder Carole Whitehead, 978 F.2d 524 (1992)
Chandler and Depweg argue that Fraser is distinguishable from this case on three grounds.
The opinion
Justice Marshall,
dissenting.
I agree with the principles that Justice Brennan sets out in his opinion concurring in the judgment. I dissent from the Court’s decision, however, because in my view the School District failed to demonstrate that respondent’s remarks were indeed disruptive. The District Court and Court of Appeals conscientiously applied Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School Dist., 393 U. S. 503 (1969), and concluded that the School District had not demonstrated any disruption of the educational process. I recognize that the school administration must be given wide latitude to determine what forms of conduct are inconsistent with the school’s educational mission; nevertheless, where speech is involved, we may not unquestioningly accept a teacher’s or administrator’s assertion that certain pure speech interfered with education. Here the School District, despite a clear opportunity to do so, failed to bring in evidence sufficient to convince either of the two lower courts that education at Bethel School was disrupted by respondent’s speech. I therefore see no reason to disturb the Court of Appeals’ judgment.