Civil Liberties and Student Rights: Morse v. Frederick Essay Sample

“BONG HiTS 4 JESUS” read the 14-foot banner held up by Joseph Frederick (12th-grade student at Juneau-Douglas High School in Juneau, Alaska) on January 24th, 2002 during the Winter Olympic Torch Relay in Juneau, Alaska, on a public street near his high school. Deborah Morse, the school principal, told Frederick to take down the banner because it could have been seen as advocating for illegal drug activity, which the school board had a policy against. Frederick claimed that he only held up the sign as a test of his First Amendment rights rather than to advocate for drug use. When Frederick refused, Morse took the banner and brought Frederick into her office where he was suspended. Frederick was originally going to be suspended for five days but when he quoted Thomas Jefferson by saying “speech limited is speech lost” his suspension was doubled to ten days.

Frederick believed that this was a direct violation of his First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and filed a lawsuit (under 42 U.S.C. § 1983) against Morse and the school district. Frederick and Morse went to the District Court where Morse won the case because the District Court did not find any constitutional violation. After the District Court ruled in favor of Morse, the case was taken to the Ninth Circuit (second appeals court). The Ninth Circuit reversed in favor of Frederick because he was not on school grounds, therefore Morse should not have punished him. In March of 2007, the case finally made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court agreed in a 5-4 vote against Frederick that public schools can censor speech if it is promoting illegal activity. This means that students today have First Amendment freedoms of speech and we may express our opinions how we please, as long as we are not violating any school policies or promoting illegal activity. It is crazy to think that one kid holding up a sign to test his First Amendment rights would impact us all so much today.