Court issues order staying discipline and allowing students to wear black armbands either as jewelry or as a protest
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE?
October 20, 2006
CONTACT: Rita Sklar or Holly Dickson
LITTLE ROCK - A federal judge issued a written decision today in the case filed by the ACLU of Arkansas against the Watson Chapel school district for violating students’ free speech rights by suspending students for wearing black wristbands in opposition to the school uniform policy. Students planned to wear black wristbands to school Friday, October 6th to silently protest the policy. When school officials discovered the plan, they announced that students wearing the wristbands would be disciplined. Such punishment included suspension, which would prohibit the students from taking exams. Some students wore the wristbands anyway and were disciplined by the school.
The ACLU requested that the Court stop the district from enforcing the discipline given the student plaintiffs and prohibit the district from disciplining the students for wearing armbands in the future. A hearing on that motion was held in the Federal District Court in Pine Bluff on Thursday, October 19.
In his order, Judge Leon Holmes said, “The testimony of the assistant principal of the high school and the principal of the junior high school leaves the distinct impression that the students were disciplined because the black armbands signified a protest." He further stated that "the student plaintiffs would suffer harm not only to their First Amendment rights, but also potential exposure to progressive discipline should an injunction not be granted." Judge Holmes noted that the students’ wearing of the bands did not violate the uniform policy, and that they were similar to other bands worn by students. Testimony at the hearing showed that the school sold black wristbands with the words “Watson Chapel” printed on them, and students were not disciplined for wearing those bands.
"Of course school officials do not like speech that opposes their conduct, but officials in this country cannot permit the speech they like and prohibit speech they do not like," said staff attorney Holly Dickson. "The students were brave to express themselves in light of the District’s clear hostility to their message, and their right to do so is protected by the First Amendment.”
School officials argued that the students were not punished because of the message their armbands conveyed, but because the wearing of the armbands was a violation of the uniform policy, under the provision that says, "Any attempt to defeat the uniformity intended by this policy is prohibited." However, an assistant principal for the junior high school testified that the difference between the black armbands and the other bands students wore was that the black bands were “a direct protest against the dress code policy
Judge Holmes noted in the order issued Friday, October 20, that the students had made a sufficient showing of a likelihood of success on the merits of their First Amendment claim to warrant issuance of the preliminary injunction. The Judge ruled that the situation was “markedly similar” to the landmark students’ free speech case Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District where the U.S. Supreme Court held that students engaging in symbolic speech and political expression by wearing armbands to protest the Vietnam War were protected under the first amendment to the United States Constitution.