12 February 2026
At Christmas time in 1965, several Des Moines, Iowa, high school students had planned to wear black armbands to school - not to protest the Vietnam war, or the Government policy toward it, but just to honor the dead on both sides of the conflict, and to support a proposed armistice. The school board heard about the plan and decided, even before anything had occurred, that if the students wore armbands, they would be expelled. Some of the students did wear the armbands, and were sent home. Later, they gave in, and came back to school without the armbands, but with their parents' help, sued the school board over their First Amendment rights of free speech. The American Civil Liberties Union helped with the case.
In September 1966, a district court judge ruled against the students, merely stating that the school board had to be able to control disruptive possibilities. The case was referred to a Court of Appeals. It took until 1967 for the next opinion, again supporting the school board action, but with a 4 to 4 vote. The case was then referred to the U. S. Supreme Court, but it was March 1968 before the Chief Justice agreed to consider it, and another year before they gave their decision. On February 24, 1969, the Supreme Court, by a vote of 7 to 2, ruled in favor of the students.
A few direct quotes from the ruling are worth reading. For instance, the Court said "students do not shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”
Another finding: "The school officials banned and sought to punish petitioners for a silent, passive expression of opinion, unaccompanied by any disorder or disturbance on the part of petitioners. There is here no evidence whatever of petitioners' interference, actual or nascent, with the schools' work or of collision with the rights of other students to be secure and to be let alone. Accordingly, this case does not concern speech or action that intrudes upon the work of the schools or the rights of other students."
And one more: "Only a few of the 18,000 students in the school system wore the black armbands. Only five students were suspended for wearing them. There is no indication that the work of the schools or any class was disrupted. Outside the classrooms, a few students made hostile remarks to the children wearing armbands, but there were no threats or acts of violence on school premises."
But, in my opinion, here's the real meat of their opinion: "The District Court concluded that the action of the school authorities was reasonable because it was based upon their fear of a disturbance from the wearing of the armbands. But, in our system, undifferentiated fear or apprehension of disturbance is not enough to overcome the right to freedom of expression. Any departure from absolute regimentation may cause trouble. Any variation from the majority's opinion may inspire fear. Any word spoken, in class, in the lunchroom, or on the campus, that deviates from the views of another person may start an argument or cause a disturbance. But our Constitution says we must take this risk, and our history says that it is this sort of hazardous freedom—this kind of openness—that is the basis of our national strength and of the independence and vigor of Americans who grow up and live in this relatively permissive, often disputations, society."
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From its beginnings, our court system has had a checkered history, with "good" and "bad" rulings (often, depending on who you ask!). In our current age, when any demonstration of the Public Voice is treated as a potential insurrection - to be immediately quelled, before it "gets out of hand," - it is nostalgically sad to read that, in at least one time in the past, a court really understood what the United States was supposed to be about. I miss that.