Stifling free speech in schools

In “Muzzle Update: School District asks U.S. Supreme Court to Intervene,” the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression reports that a local education agency in Arkansas (US) has requested that the US Supreme Court review a case about prohibiting students wearing of black armbands as a protest. The LEA suspended students for wearing the armbands as a protest against a school dress code, and it has lost the case previously.

In the petition for writ of certiorari to the Supreme Court, the school district asks the Court to decide whether the 8th Circuit improperly applied Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, a landmark 1969 U.S. Supreme Court decision that recognized that students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of expression at the schoolhouse gate.” Tinker said that students who wore armbands to protest the Vietnam War were allowed to express themselves freely unless their actions caused a “material and substantial disruption” of normal school operations or an invasion of rights of other students.

Link to the TJ Center’s update.
Here’s a link to my previous post about the muzzle awards mentioning Watson Chapel’s stifling of free speech.

Human Rights Day 08

Today’s Human Rights Day 2008. It’s the culmination of a year-long effort by the United Nations to promote observance of basic human rights by governments and people from all around the local planet.

On Human Rights Day, 10 December, 2007 the Secretary-General launched a year-long campaign during which all parts of the United Nations family took part in the lead up to the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) on Human Rights Day 2008.

The UN’s UDHR should be required reading in schools, churches, and other places where people gather. Link to the post for 7 December 2008.