Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, concluded that school officials did not violate the First Amendment. To do so, he made three legal determinations. First, under the existing school speech precedents Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (1969), Bethel School District No. 403 v. Fraser (1986) and Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier (1988), students do have free speech rights in school, but those rights are subject to limitations in the school environment that would not apply to the speech rights of adults outside school. Supreme Court cases since Tinker have generally sided with schools when student conduct rules have been challenged on free speech grounds. Second, the “school speech” doctrine applied because Frederick’s speech occurred at a school-supervised event. Finally, the Court held that the speech could be restricted in a school environment, even though it wasn’t disruptive under the Tinker standard, because “the government interest in stopping student drug abuse…allow[s] schools to restrict student expression that they reasonably regard as promoting illegal drug use.”
