T-Shirt Case Involves More Than Teen's Free-Speech Rights
By Jim Brown
June 25, 2003
(AgapePress) - A teenage girl from New York is suing her principal and
a handful of teachers over their decision to suspend her from school
for wearing a T-shirt bearing the words "Barbie is a Lesbian." But an
attorney says there's a bigger issue at stake than the content of the
shirt's message.
Fourteen-year-old Natalie Young, who calls herself a lesbian, recently
filed a lawsuit in Manhattan Federal Court, claiming her free-speech
rights were violated when she was sent home for wearing the Barbie
shirt to class. The incident occurred in April 2002.
Curt Levey with the Center for Individual Rights says if the school
had a policy prohibiting T-shirts with sayings on them, the school
would not be engaging in viewpoint or content discrimination. But he
says messages on the shirts of public school students are protected
under the Constitution.
"There are exceptions, such as if there's a real threat of
disruption," he says, "but it's hard to imagine that riots were going
to break out over this 'Barbie is a Lesbian' shirt."
Levey says public schools do have discretion to ban clothing that is
pornographic, blatantly racist, or threatens disruption. But he adds
that when a public school has no written policy against wearing such a
shirt, school administrators are given broad discretion to enforce
their values -- and that, he believes, is a problem under the First
Amendment.
"There's really a more important principle here," he says, posing that
principle as a question: "Do you really want your high school
administrators deciding which messages are appropriate and which
aren't, especially where they inevitably have their own political
biases?"
He says if schools have a right to ban shirts displaying a "lesbian"
message, such as that worn by Young, they also have the right to ban
shirts that display the Confederate flag, support the right to own
guns, and exhibit Christian messages.
Levey says it sounds as if the student in this case is protected by
the First Amendment, noting that it is not much different from a case
his firm handled in which a student was suspended for wearing a
T-shirt that displayed comedian Jeff Foxworthy's "Top 10 Reasons You
Might Be a Redneck Sports Fan."
The New York City Education Department would not comment on the Barbie
T-shirt incident.