How was Amendment 14 involved in Tinker v Des Moines?

Answer 1

Justice Fortas quoted Justice Jackson's written opinion in West Virginia v. Barnett, (1943) to explain the role the Fourteenth Amendment played in the Court's decision for Tinker v. Des Moines:

"The Fourteenth Amendment, as now applied to the States, protects the citizen against the State itself and all of its creatures -- Boards of Education not excepted. These have, of course, important, delicate, and highly discretionary functions, but none that they may not perform within the limits of the Bill of Rights. That they are educating the young for citizenship is reason for scrupulous protection of Constitutional freedoms of the individual, if we are not to strangle the free mind at its source and teach youth to discount important principles of our government as mere platitudes."

In Tinker, the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause was invoked to apply the First Amendment right of free speech, while acknowledging the school's right to maintain order and discipline.

"Our problem involves direct, primary First Amendment rights akin to "pure speech."

"The school officials banned and sought to punish petitioners for a silent, passive expression of opinion, unaccompanied by any disorder or disturbance on the part of petitioners. There is here no evidence whatever of petitioners' interference, actual or nascent, with the schools' work or of collision with the rights of other students to be secure and to be let alone. Accordingly, this case does not concern speech or action that intrudes upon the work of the schools or the rights of other students."

Case Citation:

Tinker v. Des Moines, 393 US 503 (1969)