Tinker v. Des Moines

            I found this case interesting because of the First Amendment aspect of the case. Des Moines all started in 1969 when 60 students at a High School in Des Moines, Indiana planned to wear black armbands to school to mourn for the dead in the Vietnam war. The principle heard about this through an unpublished school newspaper article. He immediately posted a ban on the armbands. Despite their protests of this only 12 of the 60 students wore the armbands, and 5 of them were suspended until they removed the armbands. The students and their parents were outraged by this. They felt that their right to free speech had been violated. So instead of excepting this as a defeat they hired a lawyer who strongly supported their case named Craig Sawyer. After numerous attempts to change the school boards ban on the armbands they took their case to a federal court. They lost in the first trial, but then appealed to the Supreme court and won.
             I feel as though the students were in the right because the armbands were protected by the first amendment. They were not inciting violence, but quietly protesting the Viet Nam war. The armbands did not prevent other students from learning. They weren't flashy, distracting, or inappropriate They were simple, small, and hardly even noticeable. Therefore by suspending the students the school officials were taking the students right to free speech away. I also feel as though the school officials had broken the law by depriving the students of their 1st and 14th amendment. The moment that they placed a ban on the armbands they had taken the students right away, and by making a law that took their rights away the had deprived the students of their 1st and 14th amendment. .
             I feel the school was wrong to put a ban on all armbands just because of one situation. The school brought more attention to the issue than it would have by letting the students quietly wear the black armbands.