Transcript of Oral Arguments in Morse v. Frederick

Here are the transcripts for Morse v. Frederick, the "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" case heard at the Supreme Court yesterday. While oral arguments are a notoriously difficult predictor of where and how the Court will rule, so far only Justice Alito's opinion would have my vote, when he said

"I find that a very, a very disturbing argument, because schools have and they can defined their educational mission so broadly that they can suppress all sorts of political speech and speech expressing fundamental values of the students, under the banner of getting rid of speech that's inconsistent with educational missions."(Transcript, pg. 20)

Dana Milbank has a humorous take on the "High Court."

All that was missing in the chamber yesterday was black light and Bob Marley. And to think Douglas Ginsburg withdrew his nomination to the high court because he had used marijuana.

If the justices sounded as if they were doin' the doobies yesterday morning, the case invited a certain amount of reefer madness.

Milbank does get serious about the case later though since it does have serious implications to the matter of where schools can draw lines about student speech. I think the Court and schools can safely say they have pretty strong rights in curricular matters, but when the issue moves in to co-curricular, extra-curricular or non-curricular matters, students rights should increase as you move further and further away from the school's core mission. I think the Justices might look at this case as an opportunity to draw some lines in the region between extra-curricular and non-curricular.

However, I still hold that this is a bad case to draw these lines with.