Bethel School District v. Fraser

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Bethel School District v. Fraser

Argued March 3, 1986
Decided July 7, 1986


Full case name:	Bethel School District No. 403, et al. v. Matthew N. Fraser, a minor, et al.

Citations:	478 U.S. 675; 106 S. Ct. 3159; 92 L. Ed. 2d 549; 1986 U.S. LEXIS 139; 54 U.S.L.W. 5054

Prior history:	Judgment for plaintiff; affirmed, 755 F.2d 1356 (1985); certiorari granted, 474 U.S. 814 (1985)

Holding

The First Amendment, as applied through the Fourteenth, permits a public school to punish a student for giving a lewd and indecent, but not obscene, speech at a school assembly. Ninth Circuit reversed and remanded.

Court membership

Chief Justice: Warren E. Burger
Associate Justices: William J. Brennan, Byron White, Thurgood Marshall, Harry Blackmun, Lewis Franklin Powell, Jr., William Rehnquist, John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor

Case opinions

Majority by: Burger
Joined by: White, Powell, Rehnquist, O'Connor
Concurrence by: Brennan
Concurrence by: Blackmun
Dissent by: Marshall
Dissent by: Stevens

Laws applied

U.S. Const. amends. I, XIV; 42 U.S.C. § 1983

Bethel School District v. Fraser, 478 U.S. 675 (1986), was a United States Supreme Court decision involving free speech and public schools.

On April 26, 1983, Matthew Fraser, a Spanaway, Washington, high school senior, gave a speech nominating classmate Jeff Kuhlman for Associated Student Body Vice President. The speech was filled with sexual innuendo, but not obscenity, prompting disciplinary action from the administration.

Fraser's speech was as follows:

"I know a man who is firm - he's firm in his pants, he's firm in his shirt, his character is firm - but most [of] all, his belief in you the students of Bethel, is firm. Jeff Kuhlman is a man who takes his point and pounds it in. If necessary, he'll take an issue and nail it to the wall. He doesn't attack things in spurts - he drives hard, pushing and pushing until finally - he succeeds. Jeff is a man who will go to the very end - even the climax, for each and every one of you. So please vote for Jeff Kuhlman, as he'll never come between us and the best our school can be [long pause after the word "come" on oral delivery, but no comma in the written version, according to Matthew N Fraser]"

After appealing the decision through the grievance procedures of his school, he was still found to be in violation of a school policy against disruptive behavior. These grounds later evolved to include obscenity at trial, but obscenity, according to Fraser, was not listed as grounds for his punishment in his initial hearing with school vice-principal Christy Blair. Fraser was suspended from school for three days as a result, was prohibited from speaking at his graduation ceremony, and his name was stricken from the ballot used to elect three graduation speakers. Fraser nonetheless was selected by a write-in vote which placed him second overall among the top three finishers, although Bethel High School administrators refused to accept the write-in vote as a valid result, and continued to deny Fraser the opportunity to speak at graduation.

With approval from his parents and help from ACLU cooperating attorney Jeff Haley, Matt Fraser filed a lawsuit against the school authorities claiming a violation of his First Amendment right to free speech, and the United States District Court, Honorable Jack Tanner, ruled in his favor. Some months after Fraser's trial and Tanner's ruling, Tanner was voted as the "worst Federal Judge in the United States" by the American Bar Association, but Fraser has risen to Tanner's defense, suggesting, "well, consider the source. Criminals will consider the most effective crimefighters and wardens as bastards, and Tanner sees some of these lawyers for the boobs and sharks that they are, so one can easily predict how they would feel about him."

The school district then appealed to the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals which ruled in Fraser's favor with a broadly worded opinion. The school district asked the United States Supreme Court to consider the case and it agreed to do so. The US Supreme Court reversed the Court of Appeals in 7-2 vote to uphold the suspension, saying that the school district's policy did not violate the First Amendment. Chief Justice Warren Burger delivered the Court's opinion, in what ended up along with the Graham Rudmann decision to be the final case of the Burger Court era. Fraser refers to this as "the silver lining in the grim cloud of my defeat." Justices William J. Brennan and Harry Blackmun delivered concurring opinions, while Thurgood Marshall and John Paul Stevens dissented.

Though the Court distinguished its 1969 decision "Tinker v. Des Moines", which upheld the right for students to express themselves where their words are nondisruptive and could not be seen as connected with the school, the ruling in Fraser can be seen as a limitation on the scope of that ruling, prohibiting certain styles of expression that are sexually vulgar.

Matthew Fraser is currently the program director and a coach of debate at Stanford University, the Executive Director of Education Unlimited (a California based educational services company) which offers a variety of academic and artistic summer programs, and a high school debate coach.