## Facts

- In December 1965, several Des Moines, Iowa, public school students planned to protest the Vietnam War by wearing black armbands to school during the holiday season.
- After learning of the plan, school principals adopted a policy requiring any student wearing an armband to remove it; refusal would result in suspension until the student returned without the armband.
- Mary Beth Tinker and Christopher Eckhardt wore armbands on December 16, 1965, were asked to remove them, refused, and were sent home and suspended; John Tinker wore an armband on December 17 and was treated the same way.
- The students stayed out of school until after New Year’s Day, the planned end of the protest.
- The students’ conduct was quiet and passive, and the record showed no material disruption of school activities and no invasion of other students’ rights.
- The students sued under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for injunctive relief and nominal damages; the district court dismissed, and the Eighth Circuit affirmed by an equally divided court.

## Issues

1. Whether a public school violates the First Amendment (as applied through the Fourteenth Amendment) by suspending students for wearing black armbands as symbolic protest without evidence of material disruption or infringement of others’ rights.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court reversed, holding 7–2 that the suspensions violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
- Wearing black armbands to express opposition to the Vietnam War constituted protected student expression.
- School officials failed to show that the armbands caused, or were reasonably forecast to cause, material and substantial interference with school operations or collision with the rights of others.
- A desire to avoid controversy or discomfort associated with an unpopular viewpoint was not a sufficient justification for suppressing student expression.

## Legal Principles

- Students do not lose constitutional free speech rights at the schoolhouse gate.
- A public school may regulate student expression only upon a showing that the expression would materially and substantially interfere with school discipline or infringe the rights of others.
- Undifferentiated fear or apprehension of disturbance is insufficient to justify restricting student speech.
- Selective suppression of a particular message or viewpoint, absent disruption-based justification, is inconsistent with First Amendment protections in schools.

## Conclusion

The Court held that peaceful, nondisruptive student symbolic expression is protected by the First Amendment, and schools may restrict such expression only when they can demonstrate a material and substantial interference with school operations or a collision with the rights of others.


Tinker v. Des Moines Indep. Cmty. Sch. Dist., 393 U.S. 503 (1969)