Silenced Students: The Uncertain but Extensive Power of School Officials to Control Student Expression

Abstract

This study scrutinizes two years of federal court of appeals school speech rulings in light of two recent Supreme Court decisions applying public forum analysis to determine the limits of government authority over student speech. The author found appeals courts have not uniformly applied public forum analysis nor have they consistently applied alternative tests. Instead, the courts have viewed school expression from widely discrepant contrast spaces that yield widely divergent outcomes. This area of the law will become more coherent when the courts consistently view schools as laboratories of democracy and evaluate school expression from the perspective of student liberty.