The US Supreme court this week ruled against the free speech rights of the high school student who unfurled a banner that said Bong Hits for Jesus during the Olympic Torch run in 2002. They argued that, since his school was there, he was subject to school rules and requisite speech limitations. One can quibble about the rights of students on field trips, etc., but he had never attended school that day, and this is crucial. The majority was so intent on supporting the administrative authority of the principal to control speech, they completely overlooked the in loco parentis issue, which affords schools certain rights and responsibilities usually only afforded to parents or legal guardians.
The effect of this ruling is to raise the in loco parentis rights of schools over the natural rights of parents, since the student was not at the rally in his capacity as a student, but rather as the independent minor child of his parents. As of Monday, your children belong more to the state and less to you than they did before the ruling.
Taken to its logical extreme, the schools now can monitor any private student behavior and override parental rights in order to preserve the school's authority.
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4 comments:
I'll show them--I'm not going to have children.
And they can get my sperm when they pry them from my dead cold fingers.
Yow. Scary... Really scary.
George: Ew.
So this morning on CNN the newshawks spend 45 minutes talking about what paris hilton is really like and no time talking about this supreme court decision.
What kind of sense does that make?
What's most odd is that this ruling, perhaps inadvertently, seems to counter one of the most traditionally "conservative" values, the rights of parents over the rights of states. Paris who? ; )
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