FRQ “BONG HITS FOR JESUS”, TINKER V DES MOINES 20 minutes
This question asks you to compare a required Supreme Court case with another Supreme Court case that is summarized below, and provides the necessary information that you need to answer the question.
On January 24, 2002, students and staff at Juneau-Douglas High School in Alaska were permitted to leave classes to watch the Olympic Torch pass by, Joseph Frederick, who was late for school that day, joined some friends on the sidewalk across from the high school, off school grounds. Frederick and his friends waited for the television cameras so they could unfurl a banner reading, ”BONG HITS FOR JESUS.” Frederick was quoted as saying he had first seen the phrase on a snowboard sticker. When the displayed the banner, then-principal Deborah Morse ran across the street and seized it. Morse initially suspended Frederick for five days for violating the school district’s anti-drug policy, but increased the suspension to ten days after Frederick argued with the principal. Frederick then appealed to the Juneau School Board, which upheld the suspension on March 19, 2002.
Frederick brought the school district to the state courts, which upheld the school district. On appeal the United States Supreme Court, Chief Justice Roberts writing for the majority, concluded that the school officials did not violate the First Amendment. To do so, he made three legal determinations ”first that “school speech” doctrine should apply because Frederick’s speech occurred “at a school event”; second, that the speech was “reasonably viewed as promoting illegal drug use”; and, third, that a principal may legally restrict that speech-based on the three existing First Amendment school-speech precedents, other constitutional principles relating to school, and a school’s “important, indeed, perhaps, compelling interest” in deterring drug use by students.

A. identify the constitutional clause that was used by the Supreme Court in this case and Tinker v DesMoines (1969)
B. Based on the constitutional issue identified in (A), explain why the facts and decisions of Tinker v DesMoines (1969) was different that the decision reached in Morse v. Frederick (2007)
C. Describe the judicial consequences of the decision reached in Morse v. Frederick (2007)

Lader, Curt, Barron’s AP U. S. Government and Politics, 12th Edition, Kaplan, Inc, 2020