May schools prohibit students from wearing armbands or buttons that contain a political and/or religious message?
Probably not. In the Tinker case, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that school officials violated the First Amendment rights of several students when they suspended them for wearing black armbands to school to protest U.S. involvement in Vietnam. The high court in Tinker even distinguished the wearing of the armbands from student dress. More recently, a federal judge in Tennessee ruled that students had a First Amendment right to wear buttons protesting the adoption of a school uniform policy, finding that “the wearing of the protest logos in this case embodies exactly the kind of speech that is entitled to First Amendment protection.”1 Other recent cases have upheld the right of students to wear armbands to protest certain school policies.2 This does not mean school officials have no authority to regulate buttons or armbands if they are disruptive or vulgar. In fact, if an armband or button could be shown to have created a substantial disruption, then school officials could prohibit such
