UA student to state lawmakers: Stop attacking our First Amendment rights
REP. MARK LOWERY (file photo)
Brian Chilson
Tyler Tidwell, a sophomore at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville and an opinion writer for the
, offers his thoughts on House Bill 1218. The bill would limit free speech in public education.
With its 1968 decision in Tinker vs. Des Moines, the U.S. Supreme Court crafted one of its most famous quotes when it declared students and teachers do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”
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Moreover, the heart of the First Amendment shields political speech, and in the 1972 Supreme Court case Police Department of Chicago vs. Mosley, the Court doubled down, saying “the government has no power to restrict expression because of its message, its ideas, its subject matter, or its content.”