Tinker Standard: US Supreme Court Case Analysis

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The Tinker Standard was a decision by the United States Supreme Court that defined the constitutional rights of students in U.S. public schools. The Tinker test is still used by courts today to determine weather a school's disciplinary actions violates student's first amendment rights. The Tinker Standard came about in December of 1965 in Des Moines, Iowa when John F. Tinker younger sister Mary Beth Tinker and friend Christopher Eckhardt decided to wear black armbands to their schools in protest of the Vietnam War and supporting the Christmas Truce called for by Senator Robert F. Kennedy. The principles of Des Moines previously adopted a policy that restricted students from wearing armbands to school. Any student who failed to follow the policy would be sent home immediately and suspended until they decided to follow the schools policy. The families of those fellow students didn’t decide to file a lawsuit until after the Iowa Civil Liberties Union approached their family, and ACLU agreed to help the family with their case. The parents in turn, filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court, which upheld the decision of the Des Moines school board. The courts seven to two decision held that the first amendment applied to public schools, and that administrators would have to demonstrate constitutionally valid reasons for any specific regulation of speech in the classroom. The court observed, " it can hardly be argued that either students or…show more content…
This has effected schools today because this standard is still put into affect when it comes down to the first amendment and expressing freedom of speech. Students are allowed to express themselves upon a certain extent. Example with religion you cannot speak of it in school saying that one religion is better than the

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