Discipline in the Public Schools Term Paper

Discipline in Public Schools: Recent Court Cases

"From 1969 to 1975, amid increasing legal challenges to the regulation of student expression in school, the Court's rulings largely confirmed students' rights to various free expression and due process protections" (Arum & Priess 2009). In Goss et al. v. Lopez et al. The U.S. Supreme Court decided that public school students do have a right to due process. In the case, a student was expelled from the Ohio public schools without a hearing for being disorderly and the school contended that because the U.S. Constitution does not specify that every citizen is entitled to a free education at public expense "the Due Process Clause does not protect against expulsions from the public school system" (Goss et al. v. Lopez, 1975). However, the majority finding of the court was that although there is not a specifically delineated right to education under the Fourteenth Amendment, "this position misconceives the nature of the issue and is refuted by prior decisions. The Fourteenth Amendment forbids the State to deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law" (Goss et al. v. Lopez, 1975).

Such protected interests, such as employment or the right to public education are not "not created by the Constitution. Rather, they are created and their dimensions are defined" through interpretation while in the example, the "appellees plainly had legitimate claims of entitlement to a public education (Goss et al. v. Lopez, 1975). The finding of the court in favor of the expelled student seems essential not simply to protect the rights of students, but to protect the rights of citizens in general. Had the courts found otherwise, not only would students have been able to be expelled from the public school system without due process, but employers might also have been able to argue that they did not need to offer due process to employees, given that employment is not technically life, liberty or property (Goss et al. v. Lopez, 1975).

However, in 2007 in Morse v. Frederick, when a student was suspended for holding up a banner with the message 'Bong Hits 4 Jesus,' at a school event, the Court found in favor of the school, stating that such expression was not protected speech. "Principal Deborah Morse took away the banner and suspended [the student] Frederick for ten days. She justified her actions by citing the school's policy against the display of material that promotes the use of illegal drugs. Frederick sued under 42 U.S.C. 1983, the federal civil rights statute, alleging a violation of his First Amendment right to freedom of speech" (Morse v. Frederick, 2007, Oyez Project).

Originally, the Ninth Circuit court found in favor of the student, citing Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, which extended First Amendment protection to student speech except where the speech would cause a disturbance. In Tinker, a young woman wearing a black armband in protest of the Vietnam War had been suspended. But the majority decision of the Court in Morse v. Frederick held that schools have a legitimate interest in discouraging drug use, although "Frederick was punished for his message rather than for any disturbance, the Circuit Court ruled, the punishment was unconstitutional. Chief Justice John Roberts's majority opinion held that although students do have some right to political…