393 U.S. 503, 506 (1969)
In December 1965, petitioners John F. Tinker, a 15-year-old high school student, his 13-year-old sister Mary Beth Tinker, a junior high school student, and Christopher Eckhardt, a 16-year-old high school student, all attending schools in Des Moines, Iowa, participated in a plan developed at a meeting at the Eckhardt home to wear black armbands during the holiday season and to fast on December 16 and New Year's Eve to publicize their objections to the hostilities in Vietnam and their support for a truce.1
The principals of the Des Moines schools became aware of the plan and on December 14, 1965, met and adopted a policy under which any student wearing an armband to school would be asked to remove it and, if refusing, would be suspended until returning without the armband.2 The petitioners were aware of this regulation.3
On December 16, 1965, Mary Beth Tinker and Christopher Eckhardt wore black armbands to their schools and were sent home and suspended.4 John Tinker wore his armband the next day and was similarly suspended.5 The petitioners did not return to school until after New Year's Day, when the planned period for wearing armbands had expired.6
Through their fathers, the petitioners filed a complaint in the United States District Court under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 seeking an injunction restraining the respondent school officials and board members from disciplining them and seeking nominal damages.7 After an evidentiary hearing, the District Court dismissed the complaint.8 The Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, sitting en banc, affirmed the dismissal by an equally divided court without opinion.9 The Supreme Court granted certiorari to review the case.10
Whether public school students possess First Amendment rights to engage in symbolic speech by wearing black armbands during school hours?11
Yes. Petitioners John F. Tinker, Mary Beth Tinker, and Christopher Eckhardt engaged in wearing black armbands as a silent, passive expression of opinion unaccompanied by any disorder or disturbance on their part, and the District Court recognized that the wearing of an armband for the purpose of expressing certain views is the type of symbolic act that is within the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment and closely akin to pure speech entitled to comprehensive protection under the First Amendment.14
Public school students possess First Amendment rights to engage in symbolic speech by wearing black armbands during school hours.15
Related opinions on this issue
Although I agree with much of what is said in the Court’s opinion and with its judgment in this case, I cannot share the Court’s uncritical assumption that, school discipline aside, the First Amendment rights of children are co-extensive with those of adults.16 Indeed, I had thought the Court decided otherwise just last Term in Ginsberg v. New York.17 I continue to hold the view I expressed in that case that a State may permissibly determine that, at least in some precisely delineated areas, a child like someone in a captive audience is not possessed of that full capacity for individual choice which is the presupposition of First Amendment guarantees.18
Whether school officials may prohibit students from wearing armbands expressing opposition to the Vietnam War based on an undifferentiated fear of possible disturbance?19
In order for the State in the person of school officials to justify prohibition of a particular expression of opinion, it must be able to show that its action was caused by something more than a mere desire to avoid the discomfort and unpleasantness that always accompany an unpopular viewpoint.20 Undifferentiated fear or apprehension of disturbance is not enough to overcome the right to freedom of expression.21
No. The school officials banned the armbands based upon their fear of a disturbance from the wearing of the armbands, yet the District Court made no finding and no showing that engaging in the forbidden conduct would materially and substantially interfere with the requirements of appropriate discipline in the operation of the school.22 Only a few of the 18,000 students wore the black armbands, and there is no indication that the work of the schools or any class was disrupted.23
School officials may not prohibit students from wearing armbands expressing opposition to the Vietnam War based on an undifferentiated fear of possible disturbance.24
Related opinions on this issue
The Court’s holding in this case ushers in what I deem to be an entirely new era in which the power to control pupils by the elected officials of state supported public schools in the United States is in ultimate effect transferred to the Supreme Court.25 The Court brought this particular case here on a petition for certiorari urging that the First and Fourteenth Amendments protect the right of school pupils to express their political views all the way from kindergarten through high school.26 While the record does not show that any of these armband students shouted, used profane language, or were violent in any manner, detailed testimony by some of them shows their armbands caused comments, warnings by other students, the poking of fun at them, and a warning by an older football player that other nonprotesting students had better let them alone.27
While I join the Court’s opinion, I deem it appropriate to note first that the Court continues to recognize a distinction between communicating by words and communicating by acts or conduct which sufficiently impinges on some valid state interest.28 Second, I do not subscribe to everything the Court of Appeals said about free speech in its opinion in Burnside v. Byars, a case relied upon by the Court in the matter now before us.29 This concurrence preserves a clear line between protected speech and regulable conduct that impinges on legitimate state interests in the school setting.30
Whether a school regulation that singles out black armbands for prohibition while permitting other political symbols is constitutionally permissible absent evidence of material interference with school operations?31
The prohibition of expression of one particular opinion, at least without evidence that it is necessary to avoid material and substantial interference with schoolwork or discipline, is not constitutionally permissible.32
No. The record shows that students in some of the schools wore buttons relating to national political campaigns, and some even wore the Iron Cross, traditionally a symbol of Nazism, yet the order prohibiting the wearing of armbands did not extend to these.33 The action of the school authorities appears to have been based upon an urgent wish to avoid the controversy which might result from the expression, even by the silent symbol of armbands, of opposition to this Nation’s part in the conflagration in Vietnam.34
A school regulation that singles out black armbands for prohibition while permitting other political symbols is not constitutionally permissible absent evidence of material interference with school operations.35
Related opinions on this issue
I certainly agree that state public school authorities in the discharge of their responsibilities are not wholly exempt from the requirements of the Fourteenth Amendment respecting the freedoms of expression and association.36 At the same time I am reluctant to believe that there is any disagreement between the majority and myself on the proposition that school officials should be accorded the widest authority in maintaining discipline and good order in their institutions.37 To translate that proposition into a workable constitutional rule, I would in cases like this cast upon those complaining the burden of showing that a particular school measure was motivated by other than legitimate school concerns, for example a desire to prohibit the expression of an unpopular point of view while permitting expression of the dominant opinion.38