y vague and broad, and that withdrawal of the student's name from the graduation speaker's list violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because the rule did not mention such removal as a likely sanction. The court made the case that nothing in the Constitution forbids the states from insisting that certain forms of expression are unfitting and subject to sanctions. (Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, 1969) The court affirmed that students do not "shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate."(Tinker) If the student had given the same speech off the school premises, he would not have been penalized because government officials found his language inappropriate. (Cohen v. California) The court found that the language used by the student was far from the "obscene" speech, which the court held is not protected by the First Amendment. (Ginsberg v. New York, 1968, Roth v. United States, 1981). The speech was found not to be disruptive to the education process. The school district failed to bring in a sufficient amount of evidence to convince that the educational process was disturbed.The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed the judgment of the district court, holding the student's speech equivalent to the armband in Tinker. The court of appeals made it clear that the student's speech was not prohibited by any disciplinary rule that the school had in effect. Although the speech contained a sexual metaphor that undoubtedly might have been offensive to some listeners in some settings, the court of appeals again stated there was no evidence that students found the speech to be offensive. The case was appealed to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court stated that the rights of students in public school do not coexist with the rights of adults in other settings. The Supreme Court found Fraser's speech offensive to both teachers and studen...
