Supreme Court Landmark Series: Tinker v. Des Moines

ANNOUNCER: The following program was produced by the United States Courts.

HOST: You’re listening to the Supreme Court Landmark Series, where we take a quick look into some of the High Court’s most influential decisions. In each episode, we talk with a law professor about how these decisions shaped history and continue to impact us today.

This episode discusses students’ First Amendment rights in the 1969 case, Tinker v. Des Moines. Catherine Ross, a law professor at George Washington University Law School, explains the background.

ROSS: Tinker came up during the Vietnam War which was a period of a lot of disorder in universities, and a bit in lower schools in the United States. And it involved a very peaceful, quiet protest by five young people who chose to wear black armbands to school in support of a moratorium on fighting in Vietnam during the Christmas holiday. And they were responding to a national suggestion that had been made by Senator Robert Kennedy. 

HOST: Two of the students involved in the protest, at a public school in Des Moines, Iowa, were John and Mary Beth Tinker.

ROSS: When the school heard that this was planned, they made a special rule designed to censor this form of silent speech, also known as symbolic speech, in which the symbol clearly communicates an idea to those who see it, and they said that anybody who wore a black armband to school would be suspended. And so, when the children showed up in various grade levels, they were sent home from school. They were told they could only return without their armbands, but that the rule would only last until the end of Christmas vacations.

HOST: The suspended students returned to school after their Christmas vacation. Meanwhile, the children’s parents sued the school for violating their children’s right to symbolic speech. A US District Court in Des Moines, Iowa, sided with the school, ruling that wearing armbands could disrupt learning. The students lost an appeal, and then turned to the United States Supreme Court. In 1969, the High Court ruled, in a 7-2 decision, in favor of the students, reversing the lower court’s ruling. 

Professor Ross explains why the decision is important today.

ROSS: The Supreme Court used this occasion to make a very broad statement and enunciate a rule for protecting the speech rights of students during the school day. They began by saying that students don’t shed their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse gates. It’s a landmark case because it made very clear that we need to take the civil liberties of students seriously while they’re in the schoolhouse. Teaching young people how to exercise their rights of citizenship and allowing them to do it is at the heart of our democracy. So, if you cut off speech while people are learning both their own personalities and identities, and also how to behave in the world, you minimize the likelihood that they’ll be active participants in democracies. So, when you ask how it impacts our lives today, Tinker has been used to protect students’ speech that schools have improperly cut off, and that’s why it’s so important for average citizens, children and their families, to know the law and to use the law and to be prepared to stand up for it.

HOST: Join us for more landmark Supreme Court case episodes at uscourts.gov.