# Bethel School District No. 403 v. Fraser > Supreme Court of the United States · July 7, 1986 · 478 U.S. 675 URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9430703 ## Case - **Full name:** BETHEL SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 403 Et Al. v. FRASER, a Minor, Et Al. - **Court:** Supreme Court of the United States - **Decided:** July 7, 1986 - **Citations:** 478 U.S. 675; 54 U.S.L.W. 5054; 106 S. Ct. 3159; 92 L. Ed. 2d 549; 1986 U.S. LEXIS 139 - **Precedential status:** Published - **Opinion:** Dissent by Marshall - **Judges:** Burger, White, Powell, Rehnquist, O'Connor, Brennan, Blackmun, Marshall, Stevens - **Cited by:** 733 later opinions in the Frix Law Library ## Citator (automated) - **Yellow flag:** Declined to follow by Guiles v. Marineau, 461 F.3d 320 (2006). - Negative treatments: 1 - Distinguished by: 6 - Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9430703 ## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction) - 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 v… - 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 penali… - 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 incon… - 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 whic… - reasoning, in a case involving a student speech containing an “elaborate, graphic, and explicit sexual metaphor,” that the “determination of what manner of speech in the classroom or in school assembly is inappropriate properly rests with the school board” ## Opinion text 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. --- Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9430703. Public record. Not legal advice.