Educational Law and Landmark Supreme Court Cases Involving Students
Tinker v. Des Moines
The court case Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District of 1969, citation 393 U.S. 503 (1969), was heard by the Warren Court and the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. The case involved three students in Des Moines who held a meeting and decided to wear black arm bands to school in order to show support for the truce in the Vietnam War. The three students were John Tinker, Mary Beth Tinker, and Christopher Eckhardt. They met at Christopher Eckardt’s house, who was 16-years-old at the time, and made plans to wear the arm bands during the holiday season and intended to end the protest on New Year’s Day. An administrator had heard of the students plan before it happened and believed it would cause a disruption to the school. The administrator banned the arm bands that displayed support of the Vietnam War. Students were asked to remove the arm bands and if they did not, they would face suspension. In spite of the threat, the three students wore the arm bands to school anyways and refused to remove them. The students were suspended from school until the end of their protest. The parents of …show more content…
Lopez, citation 419 U.S. 565 (1975), was a court case heard by the Burger Court. The case consisted of nine students that attended three different schools, two high schools and one middle school, in Columbus, Ohio. The students were suspended for 10 days due to vandalizing Central High School’s property and disrupting the learning environment. Ohio law enforces that parents must be contacted within 24 hours of an incident and the school principal did not hold hearings for the accused students before declaring that the students would be suspended. The principal’s decision was questioned and the federal court deemed that his decision violated the Due Process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Supreme Court then appealed the