Demonstrations, Not Disruption

From grade school to graduate school level, groups of militant students have been effectively demonstrating their ability to disrupt and even shut down U.S. institutions of learning. On campus and off, more moderate types have been asking with increasing frequency: What about the law? Do the militants have a right to prevent other students from enjoying their rights? Last week, in a decision that firmly upheld a peaceful protest in Des Moines by five public school demonstrators, the U.S. Supreme Court also suggested that the Constitution does not protect demonstrations when they are disorderly and disruptive.

By a 7-to-2 majority, the court ruled that the Des Moines youths had a constitutional right to wear black arm bands to school as a protest against the war in Viet Nam. Among the five junior-and senior-high teen-agers who had been temporarily suspended from their schools for making that quiet demonstration in December 1965 were Mary Beth Tinker and John Tinker, children of a Methodist minister who works for the pacifist American Friends Service Committee. Writing for the majority, Justice Abe Fortas declared that the issue was not a frivolous one, such as a boy's hair style or the length of a girl's skirt. By preventing the children from expressing a political opinion, he said, the school officials had violated the right of free speech.

Era of Permissiveness? To Justice Hugo Black, who vigorously dissented (Justice John Marshall Harlan wrote a separate dissent), the decision opened up "a new revolutionary era of permissiveness." Black, who celebrated his 83rd birthday last week, claimed that the demonstration had diverted the pupils' minds from school work. The decision was untimely, said Black, because "groups of students all over the land are already running loose, conducting break-ins, sit-ins, lie-ins and smash-ins."

Despite Black's fears, the court made it plain that it was approving only demonstrations that do not sabotage the normal school routine. The wearing of arm bands in Des Moines, Fortas said, was a symbolic act "closely akin to pure speech" --and it did not provoke any major disorder. Presumably, the court may not take as tolerant a view of more troublesome demonstrations in the future. And its reasoning may well reach beyond public schools to college campuses, where minorities have effectively prevented other students from getting the education that they or their parents are paying for.

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