Hairy Victory

Adults who yearn to clip the nation's longhairs keep running into a formidable obstacle: the U.S. Constitution. Take the school officials in Williams Bay, Wis., who insist that boys with shoulder-length locks distract other students from their studies. Last year the officials ordered two hairy boys, Thomas Breen, 17, and James Anton, 19, to get , haircuts or get expelled. Spurning both choices, the shaggy ones asked a federal district court to declare the order unconstitutional. When the court obliged, the would-be clippers continued their fight right up to the Supreme Court.

Last week the high court, perhaps too concerned with hairier matters, refused to hear the Wisconsin case and let the lower court rulings stand. The result is a victory for individuality. According to the district court, the Wisconsin school officials failed to prove that longhairs truly distract other students in this hirsute era. As to whether long hair expresses something offensive to others, the court reasoned, that something is still within the First Amendment. Shagginess is not obscenity, for example. Said the court: "Freedom to wear one's hair at a certain length or to wear a beard is constitutionally protected, even though it expresses nothing but individual taste."

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