Students Sent Home For Wearing Patriotic American Flag T-Shirt On Cinco De Mayo

One moronic girl says that the boys wearing patriotic clothing should apologize for having "disrespected" the students of Mexican heritage, and that "we wouldn't do that on Fourth of July." This is the liberal public education system at work. First, how does wearing American flag clothing "disrespect" anybody on any day within the United States? It's asinine. Secondly, why would an American student, even if they were of Mexican heritage, feel "disrespected" by the American national flag? Thirdly, it is not at all like wearing a Mexican flag on Fourth of July. It would be analogous to a kid in Mexico getting sent home from school because he wore Mexican flag clothing on the Fourth of July.

These school officials should feel ashamed and they should be the ones apologizing to the students they sent home and threatened with suspension for "defiance." I would encourage the parents of the students wearing patriotic flags to sue the school officials and the school district for violating the First Amendment's right to free speech of their patriotic children. In 1969 the Supreme Court ruled in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District that schools are allowed to regulate speech if it will substantially and materially disrupt the educational objectives of the school, otherwise there are free speech rights and content-based regulations are not allowed. That case dealt with students that decided to wear black armbands showing peace symbols on them to their schools in protest of the Vietnam War, and the Supreme Court said that the students could not be suspended by the school for doing so. With that precedent, would any court in the land dare rule that patriotic clothing in an American school can be a source of "substantial and material disruption"? I doubt it. This seems like one of most clear cases where a school's disciplinary actions, if subject to the Tinker test, would be found to violate students' First Amendment rights. Tweet