Public schools may have found a loophole in a 1969 Supreme Court decision that protects students’ nondisruptive political speech: Declare it “profane” even if the late comedian George Carlin excluded it from his famous “7 Words You Can Never Say on Television.”
The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals grappled with the meaning of profanity at a hearing Thursday in a First Amendment lawsuit by two unnamed students banned from wearing “Let’s Go Brandon” sweatshirts to their Michigan middle school, referring to the media-created euphemism for a profane chant against then-President Biden at a NASCAR race.
U.S. District Judge Paul Maloney, nominated by President George W. Bush, issued summary judgment to Tri County Area Schools last summer, finding that school officials “reasonably interpreted the phrase as containing a profane message” that can be prohibited under the 1986 precedent Fraser, which involved a “graphic sexual metaphor” in a school campaign speech.
If a school district can declare a phrase used in several congressional floor speeches to be “lewd, indecent, vulgar, or profane” under its dress code, the Vietnam War-era precedent Tinker that protects nondisruptive school protest is dead letter, the plaintiffs’ lawyer, argued Conor Fitzpatrick, of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.
The district “ignored centuries of history and tradition” in the English use of expurgated profanity, “from a radio edit of a hit song” to kids saying “h-e-double hockey sticks,” Fitzpatrick said.
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Author: Ray Hilbrich
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