Section 14

Stuff is reporting that the US Supreme Court has consented to hear the ‘Bong Hits 4 Jesus’ case.

The US Supreme Court is to decide whether a high school principal violated a student’s free-speech rights by suspending him for unfurling a banner that read “Bong Hits 4 Jesus”.

Student Joseph Frederick says the banner’s language was designed to be meaningless and funny in an effort to get on television as the Winter Olympic torch relay passed by the school in Juneau, Alaska, in January 2002.

The case is reminiscent of Tinker v. Des Moines in which the Court upheld the right of John and Mary Beth Tinker, high school students in Des Moines, to wear black armbands to school in protest at the Vietnam War, regarding the act as constitutionally protected speech.

Juneau School Board v. Frederick will determine whether the protection extends from symbolic political speech to pointless juvenile comedy (which of course it should).

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 6th, 2006 at 12:24 pm and is filed under Education, United States. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.