 Greetings from the National Archives. I'm David Ferriero, Archivist of the United States and it's my pleasure to welcome you to tonight's panel discussion on the Bill of Rights at the Schoolhouse Gate. We are presenting this program in partnership with iCivics and we thank them for their support. We would especially like to welcome all the educators, teachers and students and their parents who are viewing this program. Before we begin, I'd like to invite you to join us in a couple of days for another program you can view on our YouTube channel. On Thursday, December 17th at 1pm, we'll welcome Allison M. Parker to discuss her latest book, Unceasing Militant, The Life of Mary Church Terrell. Born into slavery during the Civil War, Mary Church Terrell would become one of the most prominent activists of her time with a career bridging the late 19th century to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s. I hope you can join us on December 17th. Today we mark Bill of Rights Day, the anniversary of the day in 1791 when the first ten amendments to the Constitution, later known as the Bill of Rights, were ratified. These amendments protect our most fundamental rights, freedom of speech, protest and conscience, and guarantee our equal protection under the law. The Bill of Rights have been displayed in the National Archives Rotunda since 1952 on Bill of Rights Day to be exact. Since then, millions of visitors from across the country and around the globe have gazed upon the handwritten words on parchment that have guided us as a nation for nearly 230 years. Over the centuries, though, individuals and organizations have debated the extent of these rights under various circumstances. Tonight our speakers will examine how these rights apply. Now it's my pleasure to welcome Julie Silverbrook, the Senior Director of Partnerships and Constitutional Scholar in Residence for iCivics, our partner organization for this evening. Thank you for joining us today. Thank you. As the archivist said, I am Julie Silverbrook, Senior Director of Partnerships and Constitutional Scholar in Residence at iCivics. Founded by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, iCivics is the nation's premier civic education provider reaching over 150,000 teachers and 7.5 million students in all 50 states each year. We are so pleased to partner with the National Archives this year to celebrate the 229th anniversary of the ratification of the Bill of Rights. We have assembled an all-star panel of experts to discuss with us the Bill of Rights at the schoolhouse gate. This is my privilege to now introduce our moderator and panelists. Moderating tonight's discussion is Stephen Vermeel. Stephen is a professor of practice at American University, Washington College of Law, where he teaches constitutional law, First Amendment, civil rights litigation, and a seminar on the U.S. Supreme Court. His coauthor of two books has published many law review articles and magazine and newspaper columns and writes a periodic column on the Supreme Court for SCOTUS blog. He previously was the Supreme Court correspondent for the Wall Street Journal and a political reporter for the Boston Globe. Our panelists are Mary Beth Tinker. In 1911, Mary Beth was one of three plaintiffs in the landmark students' rights case, Tinker v. Des Moines Independent School Community, that was decided at the Supreme Court in 1969. She holds master's degrees in nursing and public health and speaks with students throughout the country about her case and the First Amendment, encouraging students to know their rights and to use them. Stephen Driver is a professor of law at Yale Law School. He teaches and writes in the area of constitutional law and is the author of the schoolhouse gate, public education, the Supreme Court, and the battle for the American mind. It's an excellent book. You should order it on Amazon after today's program. Linda Monk is a constitutional scholar and author most recently of the Bill of Rights users guide, which has a forward by the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. It's also an excellent book, which I encourage you to check out if you haven't already. She has twice won the American Bar Association Civil Gavel Award. It's highest honor for media about the law. Before I hand this over to Steve to moderate tonight's discussion, I did want to note that those of you who are joining us virtually can pose questions via the YouTube chat. Those questions will be shared with Steve, who will then pose them to our panelists toward the end of the program. And with that, I will leave things in Steve's very capable hands. Thank you and happy Bill of Rights Day. Thank you so much, Julie. Thank you to iCivics and thank you to the National Archives for putting on this wonderful and timely program. And we're going to talk about how the Bill of Rights applies to students and at the schoolhouse gate. And we're celebrating not only the 229th anniversary of the Bill of Rights, but as we were discussing before the program started. Tomorrow marks 55 years since our honored guest, Mary Beth Tinker, engaged in her protest wearing a black armband in school, which led to the landmark decision about student rights, which she'll talk a little bit about and others will discuss as well. So let me start with a question for Mary Beth. Tell us a little bit about your experience. We'll do the math quickly and say 55 years was 1965, and it was around Christmas time. And how does that experience relate to the different kinds of protests and protest challenges that students are facing today? Thank you so much, Steve. It's so good to be with all of the panelists and with the audience and thank you to the archives and iCivics. As we talk about one of my favorite subjects, which is youth and the rights of youth, the voices of youth, which are so important to any society's growth and to a society getting better and better. When youth voices are stymied, it's not only unfair to the youth, it's unfair to the entire society, to all of us, because young people have such great creative ideas and they have a sense of fairness and they have the willingness to take risk and to take action. As a nurse, I've seen this so often and it's actually in the brain chemistry of young people. So that's how I think us kids felt when I was growing up. We were inspired by the other youth of our generation. The Black Lives Matter of our time was the Birmingham children in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963. They stood up to the white supremacists there and they marched and sang and around 2,000 Black students that year were arrested. And then soon after that in September, when I had just turned 11 years old, thanks to the free press, we learned that four of the young people in Birmingham had been murdered by the white nationalists, the white supremacists. And so it was mighty times a lot like now when so many kids are facing some of these very similar issues. And we felt that we wanted to speak up about the war then later two years after that. And we had examples of other youth who had spoken up and taken a stand. And so when we started seeing more and more of the horrors of the war on the news, we felt like so many young people a desire, a natural desire to speak up and to express ourselves. And so that's what happened. How does that relate to the challenges students are facing today? There are so many protests and so many different currents of thought in our society. What do you think is the lesson? There are so many young people speaking up again today and it's very heartening as a trauma nurse. I've been so happy to see students speaking up about gun violence and students speaking up against racism, gender issues and the environment. There are so many things that young people are concerned about. And the ruling in this case, we didn't stop the war but we did make a precedent at the Supreme Court that student voices are important and that the society through the Supreme Court said that youth voices are important and that the rights and responsibilities of youth are important and that their responsibilities are just as important. And they said that there are two things students cannot do in public school with their first amendment rights. Number one, substantially disrupt school. And that's a responsibility. And number two, to impinge on the rights of others, whatever that means. And that's been debated ever since. And I know that some of our first amendment scholars on this panel know a lot about that and we'll get into some of that later. But yes, it was a precedent that is encouraged youth to have a voice and to take part. Because the decisions that are made so often by adults impact young people. And that's why I left the hospital where I was working some years ago and I decided to, that it was good for the health of young people also to use their voices and to know their rights and to use them. Thank you. Let me turn to Justin. So, protest obviously involves free speech as I suppose one subset of what we think of as freedom of speech and Mary Beth's case, the Tinker case obviously relates very much to the free speech rights and becomes the foundation for how we think about other student rights in school. Can you lay that out for us, Justin? And where are we today? What are the challenges to students free speech rights today and other rights as well? Yeah, let me begin by commending Mary Beth and her siblings and friends for taking the stand that they did in Des Moines, Iowa so many years ago. I'm confident that it was not an easy thing to do to stand up in effect against the principal and many members of the surrounding community and say we think we want to protest against this Vietnam War upon penalty of being suspended. And that's a very scary thing for young people to do. And we should say that in December 1965, this is at a time when to the extent that people were thinking about the Vietnam War at all, they would have supported it. And so I'm aware that the family home of Mary Beth was pelted with in effect prank calls that weren't very funny and nasty letters and also as I understand it, the Tinker family home was splattered with red paint with the evident implication being that only a communist or red would dare to oppose the Vietnam War. And at the time, as I understand it, it was very much an open question whether students retained the ability to announce their views in schools. And I admire Justice Fortes' opinion on the court for, you know, sort of suggesting that students disagreeing with one another on the issues of the day is not a distraction, but is instead a vital part of the educational experience. One of the great things about this nation is that people can disagree with each other. And that he did so again, writing in 1969, when most Americans would have thought that students should have no free speech rights whatsoever. It's an incredible opinion. Indeed, he gives me the title for my book. He says he can hardly be argued that students shed their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse gate. But at the time, as I've said, that was very much an open question and had Justice Fortes not written the opinion in the way that he did, it's at least plausible to think that the courts would have said, well, students don't have any constitutional rights whatsoever, that school authorities are acting on behalf of parents in effect. And just as a parent can tell their kid, you know, be quiet without violating the freedom of speech, so too could a school principal in virtually all circumstances. So I'm really glad that that opinion exists. And there is a whole body of constitutional rights that have in effect flowed from the Tinker opinion. And just one more thought there, Justin, what are some of the challenges just briefly that the Tinker decision itself faces today? Yeah, so a couple. One would be the issue of off-campus speech. When I talk to parents and to educators and to students, they tell me that they continually encounter issues where students are writing things on social media. There are so many different platforms. I can't keep up with all of them, but you know, Twitter and Facebook and all the rest, right? And those messages then subsequently are brought by students on their phones to campus. And the question is, what can students say off-campus but online that is in effect a safe harbor? As I said, Justice Fortes' opinion says it can hardly be argued that students shed their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse gate. There are some lower court opinions that in effect disregard that notion of the schoolhouse gate and allow principals and other educators to regulate what students are doing off-campus. And that is a very distressing development from my perspective. I would also say that from my own vantage point, the Tinker opinion was marvelous. It should have been the first step, and subsequent courts should have built upon it. The test that Mary Beth announced is about whether there's a reasonable forecast of a substantial disruption, but in my view that affords students too little protection for their speech rights. All right, thank you. And Linda, when we talk about First Amendment issues and First Amendment rights in school, we're not just talking about free speech. The law of Supreme Court decisions is filled with rulings about religion in schools, prayer, school aid, all kinds of issues. Can you speak to that and how that relates to our First Amendment discussion? Well, in fact, I'd like to agree with Justin about that schoolhouse gate. It's like you want to let the First Amendment in, but you don't want students' rights to be suddenly the schoolhouses everywhere and they have no free speech outside of the school. So I'd like to, Mary Beth was rightly connecting the civil rights movement and the activism of young people there to what went on in the schools, and she talked about the Vietnam War. I'd like to look at what was going on during World War II and students' rights at that point, because that's when we first get that crack right before World War II. The Supreme Court held that, yes, students could be compelled to give the Pledge of Allegiance despite strong religious beliefs, contrary. Three years later, the Supreme Court reverses itself and says, no, even when it's something as important as patriotism, the government cannot require students to be forced to say the Pledge of Allegiance, both on freedom of religion grounds and freedom of conscience and freedom of speech. So we had that little crack, and then rightfully, I think, in the Tinker case, it was clear that it's not just students can't be forced to do something, but students also have an affirmative right. And then the question becomes, how does religion play a part in that? Because as we know that freedom of speech is tied to freedom of conscience, the first two clauses of the First Amendment have to do with what we call freedom of religion. And what does that mean when you say the government can't establish religion on one hand? Justice O'Connor said at the very least, that means coercion. Government can't coerce you into some kind of belief in violation of your conscience, and then free exercise on the other. In the schoolhouse, how that becomes relevant is because we're talking about public schools here, remember it's just the government, and then you're compelled to go to school. So if a government official, in this case, the teacher, tries to lead a prayer or some religious activity, the Supreme Court is held, that's not allowed, because that's really coercive in a school setting. On the other hand, you have freedom of expression that includes religious topics. As we know, there was a case involving a Bible Club, and called the Murgans decision, and the Supreme Court ruled there that if you have extra curricular activities that are not connected to the curriculum, then students can have a Bible Club or religious club as part of that. What they can't have is a teacher leading those activities. It has to be a custodial role versus a participatory role. And then to just add on to that, we see that the court has ruled against prayers at football games, even if they are so-called student-led, because the government's still creating the vehicle for that. We also have found that prayers at high school graduations, the court has ruled that, wait a minute, we don't want students to have to choose between being at their high school graduation versus their own freedom of conscience. So I think that gives an overview of how religious activity is expressed in the schools. As long been noted, as long as there are pop quizzes, there will be prayer in schools. It's not a question of whether or not students can pray. It's a question of whether or not teachers or the government can create the form or leave that religious activity. Thank you Linda. I'm going to go back to Justin for a minute because, and then bring Mary Beth back in. The tinkered decision in 1969 was ostensibly about free speech and protest, but that statement about students' rights at the schoolhouse gate raises questions about other student rights as well. The Bill of Rights, as we know, which we're celebrating today, has a number of provisions that relate to criminal procedure and freedom from certain kinds of government searches and seizures. Justin, can you talk a little bit about the influence of society's concern about safety in schools and criminal activity and how that relates to the tinkered decision and to student rights, and then we'll get Mary Beth's perspective on that as well. Absolutely. The Fourth Amendment prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures, and the Supreme Court of the United States has had several opportunities to contemplate the contours of that constitutional provision within the schoolhouse gate. The initial case was decided in the 1980s called TLO versus New Jersey, and at the time there was some widespread fear that the Supreme Court would say that the Fourth Amendment has no meaning whatsoever in schools because of the fears of safety. The Supreme Court gave what we might think of as a junior varsity constitutional right, where in the public park probable cause is the sort of signal test, but in TLO it was announced that it was reasonable suspicion, which there's ambiguity there, but it is clear that it's a lower standard than probable cause. The most distressing cases involving schools in the Fourth Amendment from the Supreme Court, in my view, involve suspicionless drug searches where students who participate in extracurricular activities can be required by school districts to offer urine samples. Under traditional Fourth Amendment standards, you would regard this as a violation of the Constitution because it is what people refer to as a drag net search where the government is swooping up a great deal of information without any individualized suspicion of wrongdoing and seeing what turns up. Unfortunately, from my perspective, the Supreme Court has validated these searches and said in effect that drugs are a serious problem in American society and we dare not take this away from schools districts. It's my hope that the Supreme Court of the United States will revisit that and the reason that I hope that that is so is because I think it teaches a very dangerous message to students about their place in society and makes them in effect the sort of just the objects of law and that's a dangerous message to communicate to our young people. Mary Beth, do you want to weigh in on that? Yes, because I think there is a general safety issue when it comes to young people, children and teenagers, what helps to make kids safe and what helps to make them healthy and as it turns out graduating from high school is the healthiest thing that a teenager can do. And so we want to have high schools to be places where kids want to be and classes to be places where kids want to be, whether it's virtual or in person, we want that to be an experience that students want. And if you start putting all punitive searches and things in the way, especially for extracurricular activities because that's one of the things that really attracts kids to stay in school a lot of times, it becomes a barrier to student success. And so I think these issues should, the students themselves should also have a chance to weigh in on what helps them to feel safe and what are the real dangers, you know, to them. Linda, anything to add? Well, my thought is also that are we habituating an entire generation and each successive generation to government interference in their lives? I mean, so that it's like being what is referred to in prison settings as institutionalized. So if we're training students that yes, the government is always involved in your life to a certain level, I think it's like, you know, the elf on the shelf. Some people would say that habituates you to being watched. A question of if you're having to go through a metal detector, et cetera, et cetera, every time you enter school, is that really keeping your safe? Or is that just habituating you to government searches? Let me let me pose a general question. Anybody can take a first crack at it. It strikes me as we've talked about a couple of these cases, the Tinker case in 1969, the TLO Fourth Amendment search case in the 80s, that everything's more complicated than it was when those cases were decided, right? I mean, the sort of the arm band, the protest was kind of black and white to the court in 1969, not to Justice Hugo Black who dissented, but to Fortis and the court's majority. The TLO case was really just the tip of the iceberg of the drug culture and drugs as a problem in our society. Do we need to revisit these to make them more appropriate or to fit better to the problems that our schools and students face today? Well, I think they are being revisited in various ways all the time. Steve, for example, there's a case in Minnesota where Riley, a girl named Riley, I think she was in about sixth grade or seventh grade. She was brought into the office and the administration demanded to see the passwords on her social media. And that was resolved in her favor in the end and the court said that she could not be forced to give her password. But there have been other cases, all kinds of social media cases that have been in the lower courts and have been decided in various ways. There's also a case recently in Pennsylvania, BL I think versus Mahoney, which really the out of school speech issue is so important as I think Linda mentioned. And this was one of the first cases recently where the court said that the out of school speech of the student was protected even though it was brought into school because that's a huge issue right now compared to Tinker. In the Tinker ruling, it said that in school speech was the issue, but the student did out of school, that was different. That was social media, the line is blurred, but and so really recently, there is no schoolhouse gate. If something happens outside of school that affects students in school, then the students are, you know, can be there can be consequences depending on the speech. But this recent case in Pennsylvania challenged that. So the cases, I don't know what Linda and Justin think about that, but there are cases that are sort of adapting to the times when it comes to student speech rights. Well, specifically, I'd like to chime in with Mary Beth at she's the public health expert and the trauma nurse is that it seems like we're finally a society starting to realize that drug use is a health issue. And should we treat it in a health manner versus a punitive manner. And I defer to Barry Beth on that judgment, but it seems like if in the rest of society, there's movement that way. Perhaps schools should also be following it. On the on the drug point. I would note successor to the Tinker case. That's technical name is worth versus Frederick, but that everybody calls bong hits for Jesus, where a student unfurled a 14 foot long banner across the street from high school during a sort of school released activity that said by bong hits for Jesus. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court of the United States said that it was permissible to punish the student for that speech. And, you know, that was misguided in my view because it is a viewpoint restriction Chief Justice Roberts his opinion for the court said that it's permissible to punish students who promote illicit drug use. But of course students can take the opposite point of view and without being punished by saying drugs are a bad idea. And so I, you know, Chief Justice Roberts articulates and defends that idea by saying drugs are a really important problem in American society. And he's surely right. But for my vantage point, Justice Stevens in descent got much the better of the argument where he says, in effect, what is illegal today can become legal tomorrow and how does that process work but for people exchanging ideas on the issue of the day. This was a case that was decided in 2007. And there, of course, has been a major transformation with respect to the legality of marijuana in the last 13 years. And so I think that the Supreme Court should events a greater commitment to these free free speech principles. Chief Justice Roberts has said he's the biggest friend of the freedom of speech on the current court. And unfortunately that friendship for the freedom of speech has not been in evidence on the issue of student speech. And you just to explain to our audience just and you mentioned viewpoint discrimination. Can you explain the significance of that concept in free speech law. Absolutely viewpoint discrimination is anathema. There's a people talk about the marketplace of ideas where people should be able to express themselves. And the idea behind viewpoint discrimination is you cannot tell someone, you can't say that because of the idea that it expresses that is distinct from what people would refer to as content based regulations where you would seek to silence and affect both sides of the debate, but by permitting anti drug speech, but making it permissible to punish pro drug speech. That is where the viewpoint restriction comes in. And again, from a traditional First Amendment perspective, those are sort of verboten. So it was a highly unusual opinion by Chief Justice Roberts in this bond hits for Jesus case that permits the viewpoint restriction in question. I'm glad you're talking about that issue, Justin, because viewpoint discrimination is so important. And it was really one of the main ways that we won our case. And by the way, it wasn't just Mary Beth Tinker that was involved with that action. It was a group of students and three students went to court and it was an American Civil Liberties Union case. The other students were Christopher Eckhart and my brother, John Tinker. But viewpoint discrimination because the school district had allowed students previous to us to wear black armbands to mourn the death of school spirit. But they said that we could not wear black armbands to mourn the dead in Vietnam, because that was too controversial. And so the case really is also a lot about how to deal with controversy in schools. And this is a big issue for teachers and for schools of education because we can't just eliminate controversy from school or from life or we wouldn't have education or we wouldn't have democracy. But how to deal with it is the question in ways that are respectful to all viewpoints and the government cannot decide which viewpoint is going to be allowed. That was the point of the case, the ruling in the case. So that's a perfect lead into the first question that I see posted by listeners on YouTube and I'll throw it open to anybody. But given how deeply polarized the country is right now, how do we create a school environment that provides space for expression of all different student views? Yes, it's very important traveling around the country to so many schools. I've met students that have started clubs in their schools. Some are current events clubs, current issues clubs, controversy clubs, school in Maryland that I was visiting once a month at lunchtime. They have a big group in the auditorium. The day that I was there, there were 100 kids there talking about various issues of the times and the idea of civic awareness and media literacy. We have organizations working on media literacy and the idea of respect for different viewpoints is so important. And really that's what this case is about. Really, I think that's what the First Amendment is about. It says that we in our country, we respect the right of people to have viewpoints and to express them. And that's what it's all about is respect. But I think other panelists, I think that's a hard sell, right? I mean, Justin's description that viewpoint discrimination means that the government can't favor one viewpoint over another. School officials can't favor one viewpoint over another, but it doesn't necessarily mean that we do a good job of what Mary Beth is talking about of teaching tolerance of opposing points of view. Other than talking about it and educating, is there anything else we can do to try to promote that? Well, I think we can ask students their ideas for how to do that. And, you know, they have ideas that met middle school students who started programs, who have started, you know, columns in their school newsletter, whatever, you know, they're different things. So I think we should also, you know, find out what students think would help them to talk to each other about these controversial issues that are hard to talk about a lot of times, especially for adults. It's a really important question that the person has posed here. You know, you cannot be engaged with the news at all and not understand that our society is deeply polarized, that people disagree about very basic things. It's a really confounding problem as to what to do with society. I can tell you one thing that's going to make matters worse is if we, in effect, prevent young people from being able to disagree on really important questions. If people don't get into the habit of disagreeing with people while doing so in a respectful way, then when they become adults, I am confident that our current situation will become exacerbated and intensified. Too often, in my own view, when there is real controversy in the schools, the schools resort to suspending people. And the Tinker test is a really important one, but it can also be understood as reading in a heckler's veto into the doctrine. That is the idea that if particularly sensitive listeners object vociferously enough, they can shut down otherwise legitimate speech. An example of this phenomenon, just to put some flesh on the bones, is a case out of California where there were students who wore clothing featuring images of the American flag. And that was a controversial thing because this was on May the 5th, Cinco de Mayo. And some students said, what's wrong? You don't like Mexicans? How dare you wear that clothing featuring the American flag? Well, I can understand the perspective of the students who feel frustrated and feel as though they are being trolled to use the modern parlance, but it seems to me that the solution to that problem is not to require the students wearing the clothing featuring the American flag to turn their shirts inside out or to tell them that they have to leave the school, but instead to try to have some sort of exchange of ideas so that people will be able to have greater appreciation for their fellow schoolmates and to be able to have disagreement in a sustained way. Those problems are not going to get better by just sort of driving the disputes and trying to silence them. That's the exact wrong thing in my view for the school to do. That's so true, and we need dialogue, not censorship. My brother John and I signed on to an amicus brief in that case, Dariano, saying that instead of censoring the students with the American flag shirts, there should have been dialogue. Maybe they could have had an assembly, have the Latinx kids, the Mexican kids, talk about why they were hurt when the Anglo kids wore the American flags to mock them, etc. More dialogue, less censorship. It's worth noting, I think, since we've talked about the tinkered decision, I've long thought that there are parts of that decision that don't get enough attention. The panelists already complimented Justice Fortis' vision. But in addition to the substantial disruption part of the opinion, Justice Fortis has a vision of what education is supposed to be about. He talks about how students aren't just empty vessels that the government can fill up with doctrinaire ideas and not allow other thoughts or thinking for themselves. And that, to me, is a beautiful concept that doesn't get discussed enough in the context of the tinkered decision and of student rights. Well, there are other questions. Let me move on. What student rights cases has the Roberts Court decided? And any thoughts about upcoming cases and how they might rule? I don't know if anybody wants to tackle that one, or Justin? Yeah, I can handle at least some aspects of that one. The Roberts Court hasn't done a tremendous amount with respect to students' rights. I mentioned the Bong Hits for Jesus case. Another notable case is one that was decided in 2009, and this is another fourth amendment case dealing with the prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures. It's the Reading case where a middle school student was subjected to a strip search for possession of a contraband item in the form of ibuprofen tablets, if you can imagine such a quotidian item. And this was an incredibly traumatic event for this young woman. She never returned to the school in question. The Supreme Court of the United States found that the search did violate the Constitution, that it was unreasonable. Unfortunately, the court went on to say that this right was not clearly established, and therefore granted something called qualified immunity to the school principals in question. In my view, the decision in Reading was a very straightforward application of the TLO case, which goes to whether the search is invasive in light of the age and sex of the person, and they did not create any new law. And so I wish that even in the Reading case, while the outcome was the correct one, narrowly understood, in my view, it was still insufficiently protective of student speech rights. There are other cases as well, but Linda, do you want maybe I could pass it to you or anybody else, obviously? Well, it was specifically about the Roberts Court, and that's one where I'll defer to your knowledge. The case that always comes up for me in terms of student rights is, help me with the name of it. I believe it's out of Oregon, where the young student was being asked to urinate in a cup. And justice, oh gosh, now I'm going to forget his name, starts with a B, come on, help me out. Right, right. Well, it's not really that invasive to have to urinate in a cup. And the kid says, wait a minute, what are you talking about? So I think there's this sense of where sometimes justices on the court are themselves behind the times in terms of what a modern student might consider invasive or not. So I think that's the caveat. And I think Mary Beth brings this up very well of saying that just like in Tinker, the whole idea of what does it mean to be a parent or what does it mean to be a teacher starting to change? It's not just the justice black idea of being under the ruler from the teacher. So I would also say that in with regard to the urinating test that, yeah, maybe if you grew up in a high school where everybody was required to shower naked together, that's not a big deal. But today students may have different senses of what is personal privacy. And I think the court should have to acknowledge that. Let me move on to another question back to a free speech question. How should students push back against adults who want to limit or outright restrict censor their First Amendment rights at school? Many students are not First Amendment experts. They're not literate enough in the First Amendment to understand this. And so they just acquiesce. But what can students do? Well, when it comes to student journalism, there are ways that students can speak up. Well, only 25% of high schools have student journalism, unfortunately. And those are mostly, you know, kids that have more resources. But there are groups like the Student Press Law Center that they can turn to for advice if they feel censored in journalism. As far as censorship, I mean, I repeat the advice that the American Civil Liberties Union gave us at the time that we were suspended. First, always negotiate and try to negotiate an agreement so you can work with the administration and talk to them. And a lot of times they will change their mind. I know there was a girl in Buckeye Union in Arizona. This was several years ago. And she was told that she couldn't wear a Black Lives Matter shirt for photo day. And so she started talking to the administration and they had a small little picket outside the school, some of the students, and worked with the principal. And he changed his mind. I think the school board lawyer had something to do with that also. But the principal, I really had to admire the way that he started writing things, putting out to the public about how he was feeling badly about this, that he had embarrassed this girl and treated her unfairly. So, you know, sometimes negotiations like that can can lead to success, but it depends if your censorship is coming from family member or from the school or where it's coming from. Of course, I mean, there are plenty of students that are mistreated and disrespected in their own homes. And so that's a different ball game. And you can, you know, try to turn to other adults that are respected to help you guide you in those situations, depending on how severe the limitations are. Friends, school teachers, and others for advice. But, and there's also the American Civil Law, the ACLU. I mean, they are there for youth. They're involved in still a number of cases having to do with youth rights. Yeah, I would chime in there and say that I feel like often our students and young people get a bad rap in terms of not knowing enough about the First Amendment. I think it's the adults that need to learn more about the First Amendment. And therefore, to be more cognizant of, yes, it's the sign of a good education to learn how to understand controversial issues. We're talking now about civic education being more important than ever. What is that but a core civic skill of how to debate controversial issues and treat each other respectfully? So not only is it not interfering with the curriculum, it should be a central part of the curriculum. And if adults in the community are not supporting students and teachers in that activity, then the adults are the ones that are uneducated about the First Amendment. I do want to agree wholeheartedly with what Linda has just said that we're not doing a strong enough job as a nation of communicating civics lessons. I civics does some really wonderful work on this front. My old boss, Justice O'Connor, I was a law clerk to her when she was sort of getting this project off of the ground. And it was incredibly inspirational to me to watch how much time she dedicated to this. And the truth of the matter is I wrote my book in no small part to try to get the word directly to the students themselves. I tried to write my book in a way that would be accessible to non-lawyers. I think that is the first line of defense. And so one of the best interviews that I've had is with a high school student in New Jersey who read the book and understood it and had pushed back. And, you know, we had disagreements and that's a wonderful thing in American society. And so I thought that my mission has been accomplished in effect in the sense that I have a chapter on the freedom of speech and I try to, as I say, render this material in an accessible way. And if the young folks out there don't educate themselves, it makes them more vulnerable than they otherwise would be. I think that, and as others have said, teachers need to be educated as well because if you read the newspapers, you will see people trying to tell students that they must pledge allegiance to the flag even today. Yes. What, eight decades after the Supreme Court decided that matter. And so if you want your rights not to be trampled upon, it's important for the young people to know them. I'd like to agree with that, Justin and Linda, the importance of civics now especially. And it's been, it's taken a backseat for far too long. And a lot of people are really speaking up about this and doing a good job of that. And I civics, the National Archives, their work with teachers is so important. And the hundreds and hundreds of social studies teachers, civics teachers, journalism teachers around the country who are really working hard and they don't always get the support that they should to teach our students the basics, the fundamentals of our democracy. I'm going to make that the last word from Mary Beth. Excuse me, sorry. Thank you, Mary Beth Tinker. Thank you, Linda Monk. Thank you, Justin driver. Sorry, I got something stuck in my throat. Thank you to I civics and thank you to the National Archives. And this is an important and timely discussion. It's not going to go away. The issues will remain. The Supreme Court will revisit some of these subjects in the future. And so I hope we will have more discussions and debates like this. And thank you everybody for participating and have a wonderful holiday season. And thank you, Steve. Thanks to everyone. Thank you. It was a pleasure. Thank you. Thanks everybody.