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By April 1, 2008 at 3:03 PM

Lorena Jeanne Tinker, the mother of two students at the center of one of the U.S. Supreme Court's most significant rulings on free speech rights in schools, has died. Mrs. Tinker was the mother of John and Mary Beth Tinker, who wore black armbands to school to protest the Vietnam War in 1965, leading to the landmark 1969 Supreme Court ruling in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District. The court held that wearing such armbands was symbolic speech protected by the First Amendment as long as school was not substantially disrupted. Mrs. Tinker, who had two other ...

By March 31, 2008 at 12:10 PM

The U.S. Supreme Court today declined to review the case of an 8th-grader who was suspended for an off-campus Internet message with a drawing that suggested a teacher should be shot and killed. The justices declined without comment to hear the appeal of the family in Wisniewski v. Board of Education of the Weedsport Central School District (Case No. 07-987). According to court papers, Aaron Wisniewski was a student at Weedsport Middle School in 2001 when he sent an instant message on America Online to a friend with an icon featuring a pistol firing bullets at a person's head, ...

By March 31, 2008 at 10:42 AM

The U.S. Supreme Court today agreed to review an Idaho state law that bars school districts and other local government agencies from making deductions from union members' paychecks for the unions' political activities. The court accepted the state's appeal in Ysursa v. Pocatello Education Association (Case No. 07-869), in which the state is defending the federal constitutionality of its Voluntary Contributions Act. The law was passed in 2003, and was challenged by the Idaho Education Association, its Pocatello local, and other public employee unions in the state. The ruling below by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the ...

By March 28, 2008 at 6:55 PM

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last year in the “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” student speech was not a grand slam for educators, a lawyer said today at the Council of School Attorneys meeting in Orlando. “I don’t think we even hit a double,” Michael E. Smith said in his analysis of Morse v. Frederick. In that case, the court held that the “Bong Hits” banner displayed at a school-related event by a high school student was not protected under the First Amendment. The justices also held that the principal who disciplined the student should have been given ...

By March 28, 2008 at 12:13 AM

The U.S. Supreme Court’s major decision from last year on race in K-12 education is still being debated among educators, lawyers, and others. That much was clear during the opening session of the National School Boards Association’s Council of School Attorneys meeting here in Orlando. The court’s decision in Seattle School District v. Parents Involved in Community Schools was the basis for a sharp, but civil, 90-minute discussion. “Our nation is not yet color blind,” said Anurima Bhargava, the director of education practice for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund in New York City. She ...

By March 28, 2008 at 12:08 AM

The next issue of Education Week will have these school law-related stories, which are available on our Web site now. My colleague Alyson Klein has this story about the Department of Education's proposed new regulations on the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, which include provisions about the sharing of information about potentially dangerous students. And I have this Law & Courts column on the U.S. Supreme Court's decision this week to grant review of a case that will allow the justices to reconsider an important precedent on qualified immunity for public officials. In granting review in Pearson v. Callahan (a...

By March 27, 2008 at 1:11 AM

A state appellate court in California says it will reconsider its controversial ruling that parents have no state constitutional right to home school their children, The San Francisco Chronicle reports. Education Week reported on the Feb. 28 decision by the 2nd District California Court of Appeal here, and I blogged about it here. The court said state law requires children to be taught by credentialed teachers, a decision that had the home-schooling community up in arms. The Chronicle story says that while it is not unusual for appellate courts in the state to reconsider rulings and then make only minor, ...

By March 26, 2008 at 1:37 PM

An en banc panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, in San Francisco, is hearing oral arguments today in the case of a student who challenged a strip search conducted by school officials looking for prescription drugs. I blogged about the case of Redding v. Safford Unified School District here in January, when the 9th Circuit agreed to have a larger panel of judges review the case. The September 2007 ruling by a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit in favor of school officials in the case, which has been essentially set aside by the ...

By March 21, 2008 at 12:14 PM

A few odds and ends at the end of the week: ACLU Lawsuit Over Poor Graduation Rates: My Education Week colleague Christina Samuels has this story about the American Civil Liberties Union-backed lawsuit claiming that the Palm Beach County, Fla., school district's low graduation rate violates the state constitution's guarantee of a "high-quality" education. Over at The Edjurist Accord, Justin Bathon has this post calling the lawsuit "very creative," even if he believes its chances of success are slim. NYC Principal Loses Another Round: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in New York City has denied ...

By March 20, 2008 at 11:54 AM

Lawyers for the National Education Association are urging a federal appeals court not to reconsider a ruling by a three-judge panel of the court that revived the union's legal challenge to the No Child Left Behind Act. The U.S. Court of Appeals of the 6th Circuit, in Cincinnati, is considering whether to give "en banc," or full court, review of Pontiac School District v. Spellings. The panel ruled in January that the states were not on clear notice of their potential financial obligations when they agreed to accept federal funding under the No Child Left Behind law. In its ...

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