The Legal Reader^™

[By Michael Brandt, one of the representative plaintiffs of a class action against the Chicago Public Schools over infringed first amendment rights.]

At Beaubien Elementary, there was a vote for an official class shirt design in 2003 in which the entire eighth grade (one gifted class, two regular classes) took part. I submitted a design of a goofy-looking kid giving a thumbs up, drawn with an ironically self-deprecating style. Though far from “high art,” the shirt was the most popular design within my gifted class.

Questions about the fairness of the election arose, and when they went unanswered, many in the gifted class became suspicious. To protest the questionable voting process, and because we preferred a shirt designed with more character than the official class shirt, we the gifted students decided to make a shirt special for our class.

Before a new design for our shirt had been finalized, our principal came to our room and told us that we absolutely couldn’t wear the shirt we were planning to make. The only answer to “why not?” was that our original design had lost the election. Nevertheless, we saw that our shirt was making a statement protected by the first amendment and prohibited by nothing other than the principal’s arbitrary rule.

When we finally wore the shirt, our punishment was harsh and vindictive: we weren’t allowed to go to the gym, science, or computer labs, many of our teachers treated us like delinquents, we couldn’t go to the bathroom while wearing the shirt, and we were threatened with five to seven day suspensions should we wear the shirt again. Shortly after, the principal was told by the CPS Law Department that he was wrong to obstruct us from wearing the shirt, unless there was some safety concern.

And so he invented a safety concern, in order to continue to confine us. Overnight, the reason we couldn’t wear the shirt drifted from “your design did not win” to “the design on the shirt is inflammatory, so we have to confine you for your safety.” The principle went so far as to liken our behavior to that of gangs and suggest that our actions could instigate riots. His claims were weak in credibility but powerful in effect; in a post-Columbine school atmosphere, who dares to raise his hand and say that an administrator’s authority should ever be curtailed on issues of safety?

The details of what happened are trivial except for this last one: an authority figure invented a safety issue in order to squelch freedom of speech. Besides showing the safety issue was imaginary, our primary legal obstacle is whether we, as 14-year olds, had free speech rights. The federal judge in our case has ruled that, at this stage, we have sufficiently established our claim that our free speech was violated.

So what harm was done when we were prevented from wearing our shirt? Well, what harm was done when the government censored the NY Times Op-Ed page a month ago (the White House successfully pressured the CIA pre-publication board to censor dozens of key lines of an op-ed critical of the administration’s policies on Iran)? To take it even further, what harm was done when a certain bus passenger in Montgomery, Alabama was told to get to the back of the bus?

I understand that compared to censorship in the NY Times or the Civil Rights Movement, our fuss over a shirt was a “kid-issue.” Don’t confuse that with “trivial,” though. We all were kids at the time - the things that seemed big to us were, inevitably, kid issues. I’m not pretending that our shirt bears an iota of the significance of the op-ed or Rosa Parks’s bus seat. The fact is, though, there is a striking similarity in each of these cases of civil rights: the oppressed in each situation drew a line, saying an issue was significant enough that they were not willing to sit idly by while their rights were usurped.

What keeps our democracy vital is the people who ensure that the rights and ideals granted by the Constitution play a role in every corner of politics. If kids aren’t taught to think democratically about “kid issues,” how are they as adults expected to think democratically about “adult issues?” Unlike eligibility to vote, deep understanding of civil liberties does not automatically come at age 18. Civil rights aren’t something to just reflect about on Martin Luther King Jr. Day; public schools have an obligation to foster a democratic attitude in the mind of each and every student.

If Brandt is right about the teachers' reactions, this sure sounds like ``political correctness'' run amok. But (IANAL) Judge Posner may be right that there is no harm (in the legal sense) in this case.

SOOOOOOO Glad you LOST!

Those who have to call themselves "gifties" aren't, even if their moms are lawyers....How pathetic that these kids still haven't learned the REAL lesson here.

As a lawyer myself, I find listening to the oral argument truly painful. The real villain here, in my opinion, is the lawyer who pursued this. Thank heavens the plaintiffs were required to repay the school district its costs!!!

Mr. Brandt,

You write: "public schools have an obligation to foster a democratic attitude in the mind of each and every student"

How does permitting a group of self-important students to implicitly taunt "tards" by wearing a tshirt with an elitist message 'foster a democratic attitude' in the minds of students?

Thank you

P.S. I appreciate your passion for civil liberties. I just find the apparent attitude of your fellow plaintiffs with respect to the other students in the school to be abhorrent.

Mr. Brandt,

Your t-shirt design was not good. Your classmates did not vote for it. I would not have voted for it either. I feel pity for you and your mother that you both fail see how this is NOT a civil liberties issue.

Perhaps the lesson learned here is that academic talent and artistic talent do not always walk hand-in-hand. That, and of course, the fact that every type of class be it gifted or regular has a class bully.

I'm talking about you Michael Brandt.

Though the issue is trivial, Mr. Brandt is essentially correct. If you ban speech because it "offends" someone, then there is no free speech. I think the case arose primarily because of the typical arrogance and stupidity of the school administration. The principal (check your spelling, Mr. Brandt) didn't like the shirt, he fixed the election, he banned the losing shirt, he punished the wearers, and then he scrambled to find a reason for his arbitrary conduct. If he had been a little more flexible and reasonable in the first place, this case would not have arisen. As a matter of etiquette, however, gifties should learn that they have a duty to be polite to all people (noblesse oblige). Their parents should not have allowed them to speak of "tards."