Defoe And Spiva Case Summary

In the Defoe and Spiva case, the plaintiffs, Tom Defoe, a minor by and through his parent and guardian Phil Defoe, and Phil Defoe, prosecuted the defendants Sid Spiva, Merl Krull, Greg Deal, V.L. Stonecipher, John Burrel, and the Anderson County.
The fact was that the Plaintiff Tom Defoe was a high school student who attended Anderson County High School (ACHS), and Anderson County Career and Technical Center (ACCTC) until December, 2007. Both of the ACHS and ACCTC have a dress code that prohibited racial and ethnic symbols, gang affiliations, vulgar, subversive, or sexually suggestive language, and any items that promote alcohol, tobacco, and drugs, because there were several racially charged incidents happens in that district in the past sixty years. In 2006, the plaintiff Tom Defoe has worn the clothes with the Confederate flag for two times, even though the school officials asked him to remove it and gave him warnings that he has already violated the dress code. Therefore, school decided to suspend the plaintiff Tom Defoe.
In November, 2006, the plaintiffs alleged the Anderson County School District of violating the First and Fourteenth Amendments,

because they thought the defendants have violated Tom Defoe’s freedom of speech rights, in federal district court. Between September, 2007 and April, 2008, both of the plaintiffs and the defendants filed motions for summary judgment. In August, 2008, the jury was not able to reach an agreement, so the jury trial was held and ended in a mistrial. In August, 2009, the district court granted summary judgment in favor of the defendants and dismissed the action, based on the court’s decision of Barr v. Lafon case, but the plaintiff appealed.
There were two different kinds of opinions in this case, the concurring opinion and majority opinion. The main opinion relied on the standard in the case Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District to determine whether the school’s behaviors for the plaintiff Tom Defoe is unconstitutional. The school district has to prove that their dress code “must be able to 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,” the particular items that plaintiff Tom Defoe worn has disturbed school works or other students’ rights, so that they could use the decision of the Tinker’s case as a reference.
In the Tinker’s case, the Supreme Court has made clear that “First Amendment rights, applied in light of the special characteristics of the school environment, are available to teachers and students.” In fact, this means that students do not shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech in school.
According to the record, the court concluded that the school officials can only predict that the clothes with the Confederate flag, which Tom Defoe has worn, will lead the result of disruption of school works and racial problems. Finally, the court has upheld the district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of the school board on the basis that school officials can predict the disruption of school works and disciplines by the Confederate flag reasonably, by using the Tinker standard. Because the evidence in the record shows that a great number of precedents of racial violence, threats, and tension has happened in that district before, such as the graffiti with racial insult on the school walls, the physical conflict causing by racial insult, and the “hit lists” of specific student names. Those evidences were not directly caused by the Confederate flag, although the Confederate flag may have potential harm to school and the other students. In America, Confederate flag is the a controversial, inflammatory icon, because it has the symbol meaning of white supremacists.
Although the plaintiffs argued that the clothes with the Confederate flag itself has not actually caused any disruption at the school, that was a kind of misapplies of the Tinker standard, because the Tinker standard does not require the disruption to have actually occurred. The plaintiff also argued that the recent racial conflict in ACHS and ACCTC cannot be the evidence to judge, because the plaintiffs argued the racial tension is low. However, there were plenty of the evidence still happens currently that shows racial tension is serious in that district. Those evidences display that the Confederate flag may cause more racial tension in the future.
The majority opinion also overruled the argument of the plaintiffs that the dress code of the school was a kind of discrimination, because the code has banned all kinds of racial symbol. The plaintiffs argued that the banning of the Confederate flag by defendants violated the First Amendment, because the defendants are suppressing a particular viewpoint they find offensive. However, there was no evidence shows discrimination in this case, because the other kinds of clothes and accessories, with racial or ethnic symbols or other languages and images, that have bad influences to school works and students, are also prohibited in Anderson County Schools as the Confederate flag. Therefore, the viewpoint of discrimination argument has no merit.
The plaintiffs have also argued that the prohibition of the school district’s across-school ban is unconstitutional, because dress code of the school was not tailored narrowly. The plaintiffs contended that the ban is unnecessarily broad, because no school officials can make exceptions to the ban based on the individual schools and classrooms. However, the dress code of the school district did serve a substantial governmental interest, because the government’s interests is as same as the objective of school district, which is educating its students in a learning environment conductive to fostering both knowledge and democratic responsibility. That comes back to the former viewpoint of Tinker standard.
The court approved that the dress code bans the racially divisive symbols and its application to the Confederate flag, so it is narrowly tailored to the state and school district’s substantial interest in educating students in the public school system. Therefore, the majority affirmed the judgment of the district court granting summary judgement in favor of Defendants.
The difference between the majority opinion and concurring opinion is whether using the Tinker’s case as a standard to determine this case.

Instead of relying on the reasoning of Tinker, the concurring opinion deviated the main opinion from the case Morse v. Frederick. The concurrence has the opinion that the racial tension in the public school is caused by the problem of drug abuse. The concurrence stated two reasons to choose to follow Morse rather than Tinker. On the one hand, the evidence could not strongly show the threat of substantial disruption, so the concurrence did not believe the evidence could apply to the Tinker analysis. On the other hand, the concurrence viewed Tinker to be the exception to the rule, instead of the standard, because the mode of analysis for Tinker is not

absolute.
According to the case of Morse, school officials can limit speech in reasonable method in public education. Therefore, it is not necessary for the defendants to show the disruption that would occur by the clothes. In addition, the concurring opinion denied the argument that the First Amendment permits censorship of student speech that interferes with a school’s educational mission. According to Tinker standard, school will not able to limit nondisruptive speech of political or social issues that administration finds distasteful or wrong. In contrast, according to the case of Morse, racial hostile speech, which should be determined by schools, can be restricted by the public schools.
In this case, the court has determined whether the dress code of ACHS and ACCTC is constitutional be strict scrutiny. In the first step, the dress code did have intent to express a message, which is prohibiting those clothes or accessories that may cause bad effects to school works and students.
Then, the government regulation did focus directly at the suppression of the conduct. This case related to the race and religion problems based on the content of speech and actions, thus it applied strict scrutiny test. According the previous viewpoints, there is a compelling government interest of the dress code of the school district, because the school district and the government have the same objective, that educating students with good environment. Also as the former viewpoints, the regulation is necessary and narrow in scope, because the racial tension of the school district is serious. Therefore, the dress code of ACHS and ACCTC are constitutional.