On April 20, 2018, thousands of student activists walked out of their classrooms protesting gun violence. This was the nation’s third, student-organized protest following the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Students from over 2,000 nationally affiliated groups marched with their teachers chanting “never again” and “enough is enough.” Not all teachers, however, were so supportive. In Shawnee Mission, Kansas, the school district permitted student participation but issued a directive prohibiting students from discussing guns, gun control, or school shootings: topics central to the national walkout. During the event, a middle school assistant principal confiscated a student’s written speech and gave detentions and suspensions for “being disruptive.” Meanwhile, a high school assistant principal confiscated a camera that one student journalist used to record the event. On May 31, the ACLU of Kansas filed suit against the district on behalf of three students who say the school violated their First Amendment free speech rights.
Since student protests of the 1960s, courts have struggled mightily to understand and define the types of First Amendment protections afforded to students. Although students do not shed their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse gate, they are not granted the same full First Amendment protections as adults. Schools—and ultimately courts—must balance the expressive value of student speech against undue interference with the effectiveness of a school’s pedagogical functions.
Using legal, historical, and qualitative research methodologies, this paper discusses the chronicle of American student protest, laying the framework to analyze the legal issues at bar in the Shawnee Mission case. Is this an unconstitutional abridgment of free speech? To what extent did these students disrupt the pedagogical process through protest? What are the policy implications of censoring the student press? If granted certiorari, how would a conservative court likely rule on the issue?
About the presenterHarrison Michael Rosenthal
Harrison Rosenthal is a joint Juris Doctor and Doctor of Philosophy student at the University of Kansas Schools of Law and Journalism, respectively. His research interests include First Amendment expression, press freedom, and media law. Rosenthal has interned for the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas, authoring a report on recidivism and court diversion programs in Kansas. He has clerked for the Seventh and Tenth Judicial Districts of Kansas.