CHICAGO (CN) — A three-judge panel of the Seventh Circuit heard arguments Friday morning over whether two Wisconsin public school students wearing shirts with gun imagery in class are protected by free speech rights.
The questions before the panel included both whether these specific students' shirts were protected, and whether gun imagery on students' clothes should be considered protected speech in general.
The issue stems from two students - identified in court records as N.J. and A.L. - wearing shirts with depictions of guns on them to school to show their support for Second Amendment rights. Both students' respective middle and high schools ordered them to cover those depictions or not wear them to school at all. The students, through their parents, sued their school districts on the grounds that those orders violated their First Amendment rights.
However, U.S. District Judge William Griesbach in Green Bay ruled that the students' shirts were only definitively protected by the First Amendment outside of school.
"Wearing them is... entitled to constitutional protection outside the school context," the George W. Bush appointee wrote in his May 2021 opinion on the matter. "The question of whether wearing them in the school setting is likewise entitled to constitutional protection requires consideration of the law governing student speech and [the school districts'] asserted justification for prohibiting them."
Griesbach ultimately sided with the school districts, citing administrators' testimony that the shirts were creating fear and disruption among the student body, particularly in light of two school shootings that took place in eastern Wisconsin in late 2019. This climate of fear, the judge said, overruled the students' right to this form of free speech in a public learning environment. He also pointed out that being prevented from wearing a pro-Second Amendment shirt in class does not prohibit N.J., A.L. or other students from learning about or debating the Second Amendment in class.
"A prohibition limited to images of firearms on clothing worn by students while attending class does not prevent students from debating the value of firearms or the merits of gun control laws. Students remain free to speak and write on the issue, as appropriate in classroom discussions and essays, or privately among themselves," Griesbach wrote. "Indeed, unlike students in schools that have adopted dress codes that prohibit all printed or pictorial messages on clothing worn by students, N.J. and A.L. even remain free to wear shirts that express their support for the Second Amendment in other ways."
Ronald Stadler, lead attorney for the Neenah School District and Kettle Moraine School District, hit similar beats in his arguments Friday morning before the Seventh Circuit, pointing out how images of guns that may have seemed innocent 50 years ago have taken on a different context in 2021.
"Our public schools have changed dramatically from the time that Mr. Monroe, myself, or any of you were in school," Stadler told the three-judge panel, referring to the students' lead attorney John Monroe. "Our schools have been shaped, and some might say disfigured, by Columbine in '99, Sandy Hook in 2012, Marjorie Stoneman Douglas in 2018, and the hundreds of school shootings that have occurred around the nation since then."
Chief U.S. Circuit Judge Diane Sykes, another George W. Bush appointee, posed this issue to Monroe, asking if the court should consider the reality of school shootings in the context of deciding whether to overturn Griesbach's decision. Monroe waved the question away, saying isn't aware of any link between images of guns on shirts and actual school shootings.
"There would have to be some kind of correlation demonstrated between wearing a T-shirt that depicted a gun and a school shooting. I'm not aware of any such correlation," Monroe said, also arguing that even the school administrators in the case could not provide hard evidence of the shirts causing a substantial disruption to the student body.