WASHINGTON (ABP) — In a procedural move, the Supreme Court cleared the way March 5 for a lawsuit over a California school district's suspension of a teenager who wore an anti-gay T-shirt to class.
The decision means the court may soon revisit the debate over students' free-speech rights and school officials' responsibility to foster learning for students of all backgrounds.
The justices summarily vacated a lower court's ruling against a student in Poway, a San Diego suburb. According to court documents, school officials suspended Tyler Chase Harper in 2004 after he refused to take off a shirt that said, “I will not accept what God has condemned” on one side and, “Homosexuality is shameful, Romans 1:27” on the other.
School officials said Harper wore the shirt on the national Day of Silence, which is sponsored by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network. During the Day of Silence, participants don't talk in order to call attention to harassment and discrimination of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students.
In the case, school officials contended that Harper's T-shirt's message could have caused disruptions or arguments among students. Other students were allowed to wear pro-gay messages to class that day.
Harper sued, alleging that the policy the district cited violated his constitutional rights to free speech and equal protection. His attorneys sought a preliminary injunction preventing school officials from enforcing the policy.
Lower federal courts ruled against the injunction. A divided three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals — regarded as the nation's most liberal appeals court — went further, saying Harper was unlikely to win on the case's broader merits.
“Those who administer our public educational institutions need not tolerate verbal assaults that may destroy the self-esteem of our most vulnerable teenagers and interfere with their educational development,” Judge Stephen Reinhardt, who authored the panel's majority decision, wrote. “Because a school sponsors a 'Day of Religious Tolerance,' it need not permit its students to wear T-shirts reading, 'Jews Are Christ-Killers' or 'All Muslims Are Evil-Doers.'”
But Judge Alex Kozinski wrote a blistering dissenting opinion, saying school officials were censoring the teen's political and religious views while tacitly endorsing opposing views.
“Harper's T-shirt was not an out-of-the-blue affront to fellow students who were minding their own business,” Kozinski wrote. “Rather, Harper wore his T-shirt in response to the Day of Silence, a political activity that was sponsored or at the very least tolerated by school authorities.”
Cultural conservatives decried the Harper ruling, arguing it tended toward government censorship of traditional Christian viewpoints on sexuality.
By the time Harper's appeal reached the Supreme Court, he had graduated from high school. The latest decision renders moot his attempt to enjoin the policy's enforcement, but it also erases the 9th Circuit's opinion.
The court's order notes that Justice Stephen Breyer dissented from the decision. He did not give his rationale for dissent, and no other dissent was recorded.
The high court's decision clears the way for another lawsuit Harper filed on the case's broader constitutional merits. A federal district-court judge recently ruled against him in that case. Harper will likely appeal that to the 9th Circuit.
The school district's policy remains in place. Both cases are called Harper v. Poway Unified School District.
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Read more:
First Amendment Center analysis of Harper v. Poway Unified School District (3/6/2007)
Supreme Court's order in No. 06-595, Harper v. Poway Unified School District (3/5/2007)