Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District is a landmark First Amendment case decided Feb. 24, 1969. A group of students, including Mary Beth Tinker and Christopher Eckhardt, wore black armbands to school in protest of the Vietnam War. The school administration drafted a policy that prohibited students from wearing the armbands, but that did not stop Tinker and Eckhardt. The two continued to wear the armbands and were consequently sent home. As a result, the students and their parents sued the school district for violating their First Amendment rights.
The Supreme Court ruled in the students’ favor, stating that schools cannot censor students’ rights to freedom of speech and expression unless the officials can show that their “action was caused by something more than a mere desire to avoid the discomfort and unpleasantness that always accompany an unpopular viewpoint.”
Read more about the Tinker decision and its 50th anniversary here.
