Thread: Supreme Court rejects free speech appeal over Cinco de Mayo school dispute

I'm torn on this one, I really am, and here's why. I believe schools have the right to establish a dress code and I don't know if this dress code issue was fairly ordered or not. If other students were allowed to wear national t-shirts from another nation, then US students were discriminated against for not being allowed to wear theirs. If other students were not allowed to wear national t-shirts from another nation, then I don't see the discrimination.

The suit was filed as a Free Speech issue under the 1st Amendment, but students do not have free speech in public schools and never have had that right in public schools. Schools can control what you wear, what you say, what you do and what you write. They are learning institutions with disciplinary and orderly conduct responsibilities with broad rights to regulate behavior, but they can not discriminate in the manner in which they do that.

Provided other students were allowed to wear national t-shirts but the 3 plaintiffs in this case were not, then they should file another suit under the 14th Amendment instead of the 1st amendment, and their issue would be ethnic discrimination based on nation or origin instead of free speech.