Limits to Freedom: No Drum-Playing, Please

For remaining seated while her classmates recited the pledge of allegiance during the ceremony at New Jersey's Mountain Lakes High School, Deborah Lipp, 16, knew that she could be expelled despite her straight-A average. She was, after all, breaking a state law, first passed in 1903 and amended in 1954, requiring students "to show full respect to the flag while the pledge is given merely by standing at attention." Last week Federal District Court Judge H. Curtis Meaner declared the requirement unconstitutional. But the judge added a cautionary note: "Of course, the student has no right to disrupt the classroom--to jump up and down, play a drum, sing a song, pound on the table." So far no libertarian has attacked this injunction as an abridgment of freedom.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.