Joseph Frederick v. Deborah Morse Juneau School Board

This is a First Amendment student speech case.

Facts

One January day, Coca-Cola and other private sponsors supported a “Winter Olympics Torch Relay” in Juneau, Alaska. Students were released from school so that they could watch the Olympic torch pass by. Joseph Frederick, then an 18-year-old senior at Juneau-Douglas High School, never made it to school that morning because he got stuck in. the snow in his driveway, but he made it to the sidewalk, across from the school, where the torch would pass by. He and some friends waited until the television cameras would catch it, then unfurled a banner reading “Bong Hits 4 Jesus.” Deborah Morse, the school principal, crossed the street, grabbed and crumpled up the banner, and suspended Frederick for ten days. He appealed the suspension administratively, but it was sustained. He then filed a 42 U.S.C. § 1983 action in the Federal District Court seeking declaratory and other relief.

There was disorder at the torch passing, but the uncontradieted evidence is that it had nothing to do with Frederick and his fellow sign-holders. Coca-Cola handed out samples in plastic bottles, and students threw them at each other. Students threw snowballs.…