Supreme Court will only clarify school rules

Don’t look to the Supreme Court to set school rules, only to clarify them when officials have abdicated that responsibility, Chief Justice John Roberts said Saturday according to an AP report (you can view the full report by clicking here).

At a judicial conference, Roberts was asked how school administrators should interpret seemingly conflicting messages from the Court in two recent decisions, including one last week that said Arizona officials conducted an unconstitutional strip-search of a teenage girl. You can view our blog post on that decision by clicking here. In 2007, the justices sided with an Alaska high school principal, ruling that administrators could restrict student speech if it appears to advocate illegal drug use. You can view our blog post on that decision by clicking here. The court’s full decision in the free speech case can be viewed by clicking here.

According to the AP report, Roberts told the audience there was no conflict in the court’s rulings, just clarity intended to deal with narrow issues that surface from government actions. “You can’t expect to get a whole list of regulations from the Supreme Court. That would be bad,” Roberts said. “We wouldn’t do a good job at it.”

You can be the judge of the clarity that emerges from these decisions. From my perspective, the 8-1 decision in the strip search case provided reasonable clarity and was a sound decision based on constitutional principles. The 2007 free speech case, on the other hand, was far less clear and was somewhat disturbing in terms of the curbs on free speech that were articulated. The First Amendment says quite clearly that “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press….” (emphasis supplied). But the Court’s 2007 decision says that you can have some laws abridging speech when that speech is reasonably viewed as promoting illegal drug use.