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The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that a school district in California was within its rights when it ordered kids who wore T-shirts adorned with the American flag to turn them inside out.

The context of the decision will likely be lost once this hits the usual places, but it's significant. The school took the action on Cinco de Mayo on a day which historically featured fights between Latino and Anglo students.

The parents who brought the suit said their kids weren't trying to incite the Latino students; they were just showing their patriotism, the 

"School officials have greater constitutional latitude to suppress student speech than to punish it," the justices wrote (

), pointing out that no students were punished in this case.

Eugene Volokh, the UCLA law professor who writes 

, sees a bigger problem here than the one people debating the case might focus on:

NewsCut

Bob Collins

Author

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that a school district in California was within its rights when it ordered kids who wore T-shirts adorned with the American flag to turn them inside out.


Flag ban decision shows depth of desperation in America’s schools

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