Law & Courts

U.S. Appeals Court Backs District’s Rules on School Uniforms

By Mark Walsh — May 15, 2008 3 min read
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

Includes updates and/or revisions.

A federal appeals court has upheld a school district’s policies permitting individual schools to decide whether to require students to wear uniforms.

A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, in San Francisco, ruled 2-1 on May 12 that the policies of the Clark County, Nev., school district, which includes Las Vegas, do not violate the First Amendment rights of students.

“The district’s uniform policies limit only one form of student expression (while leaving open many other channels for student communication),” and they are “consistent with the district’s goals of creating a productive, distraction-free educational environment for its students,” said the majority opinion by U.S. Circuit Judge Michael Daly Hawkins in Jacobs v. Clark County School District.

The case involves a 2003 policy that added to the basic dress code rules for the 310,000-student district by allowing individual schools to establish more-stringent policies on student attire if those schools’ parents supported the idea in surveys.

A typical school policy requires khaki pants and solid-color polo shirts or other shirts with no messages permitted except a school logo.

The policy was challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada on behalf of several students, including one high school student who was repeatedly suspended for wearing religious messages on her clothing. Some students in the lawsuit objected to the “forced uniformity” of the policy or maintained that their religious beliefs required them to embrace their individuality.

A federal district court largely upheld the district’s uniform policies in a summary judgment.

Meeting the Test

The 9th Circuit majority said that the school uniform policies were viewpoint- and content-neutral, and that under an “intermediate scrutiny” standard of review for First Amendment questions, the policies passed muster as long as they furthered an important governmental interest unrelated to the suppression of free speech and had only incidental restrictions on protected speech.

The court said the Clark County district met that test because school officials submitted affidavits saying that the policy had helped improve student achievement, promoted safety, and enhanced the school environment.

Citing a “Manual on School Uniforms” put out by the U.S. Department of Education in 1996, under President Clinton, the majority further said that the federal department has “acknowledged the efficacy of school uniforms.” That was the same year that Mr. Clinton promoted school uniforms in his State of the Union address. The current Bush administration has not been as outspoken on the issue, and the efficacy of uniform policies has been questioned by some education researchers. (“Uniform Effects?,” Jan. 12, 2005.)

A Dissent

Writing in dissent, U.S. Circuit Judge Sidney R. Thomas said the majority had failed to properly apply the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, the 1969 case upholding the right of students to wear black armbands to protest the Vietnam War as long as school was not substantially disrupted.

Noting that the uniform policies prohibit “all messages on clothing, except for messages that support the school,” Judge Thomas said: “Confining messages to pro-government content cannot be said to be viewpoint- or content-neutral.”

Bill Hoffman, the general counsel for the Clark County district, said 50 of the district’s 312 schools have enacted parent-supported uniform policies.

“The court said kids have other ways of expressing themselves,” Mr. Hoffman said, pointing to a passage in the majority opinion that said students could still have conversations with their peers, publish articles in school newspapers, and join student clubs.

Allen Lichtenstein, the general counsel of the ACLU of Nevada, said he found the reference to school newspapers as a forum for unfettered student expression ironic, since the Supreme Court has ruled that such publications are ultimately under the control of school authorities.

He said the plaintiffs would seek a rehearing before a larger panel of judges on the 9th Circuit court.

“By definition, a uniform is communicative,” Mr. Lichtenstein said. He also scoffed at the majority’s conclusion that school logos permitted as part of the uniforms were only meant to be, as the court put it, “an identifying mark, not a communicative device.”

“If logos don’t have any communicative element,” Mr. Lichtenstein said, “try telling Coca-Cola or McDonald’s that their symbols don’t communicate anything.”

A version of this article appeared in the May 21, 2008 edition of Education Week as U.S. Appeals Court Backs District’s Rules on School Uniforms

Events

Jobs Virtual Career Fair for Teachers and K-12 Staff
Find teaching jobs and other jobs in K-12 education at the EdWeek Top School Jobs virtual career fair.
Ed-Tech Policy Webinar Artificial Intelligence in Practice: Building a Roadmap for AI Use in Schools
AI in education: game-changer or classroom chaos? Join our webinar & learn how to navigate this evolving tech responsibly.
Education Webinar Developing and Executing Impactful Research Campaigns to Fuel Your Ed Marketing Strategy 
Develop impactful research campaigns to fuel your marketing. Join the EdWeek Research Center for a webinar with actionable take-aways for companies who sell to K-12 districts.

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

Law & Courts When Blocking Social Media Critics, School Officials Have Protections, Supreme Court Says
The court said public officials' own pages may be "state action," but only when they are exercising government authority.
6 min read
An American flag waves in front of the Supreme Court building on Capitol Hill in Washington, on Nov. 2, 2020.
An American flag waves in front of the Supreme Court building on Capitol Hill in Washington, on Nov. 2, 2020.
Patrick Semansky/AP
Law & Courts Oklahoma Nonbinary Student's Death Shines a Light on Families' Legal Recourse for Bullying
Students facing bullying and harassment from their peers face legal roadblocks in suing districts, but settlements appear to be on the rise
11 min read
A photograph of Nex Benedict, a nonbinary teenager who died a day after a fight in a high school bathroom, is projected during a candlelight service at Point A Gallery, on Feb. 24, 2024, in Oklahoma City. Federal officials will investigate the Oklahoma school district where Benedict died, according to a letter sent by the U.S. Department of Education on March 1, 2024.
A photograph of Nex Benedict, a nonbinary teenager who died a day after a fight in a high school restroom, is projected during a candlelight service at Point A Gallery, on Feb. 24, 2024, in Oklahoma City. Federal officials will investigate the Oklahoma school district where Benedict died, according to a letter sent by the U.S. Department of Education on March 1, 2024.
Nate Billings/The Oklahoman via AP
Law & Courts Supreme Court Declines Case on Selective High School Aiming to Boost Racial Diversity
Some advocates saw the K-12 case as the logical next step after last year's decision against affirmative action in college admissions
7 min read
Rising seniors at the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology gather on the campus in Alexandria, Va., Aug. 10, 2020. From left in front are, Dinan Elsyad, Sean Nguyen, and Tiffany Ji. From left at rear are Jordan Lee and Shibli Nomani. A federal appeals court’s ruling in May 2023 about the admissions policy at the elite public high school in Virginia may provide a vehicle for the U.S. Supreme Court to flesh out the intended scope of its ruling Thursday, June 29, 2023, banning affirmative action in college admissions.
A group of rising seniors at the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology gather on the campus in Alexandria, Va., in August 2020. From left in front are, Dinan Elsyad, Sean Nguyen, and Tiffany Ji. From left at rear are Jordan Lee and Shibli Nomani. The U.S. Supreme Court on Feb. 20 declined to hear a challenge to an admissions plan for the selective high school that was facially race neutral but designed to boost the enrollment of Black and Hispanic students.
J. Scott Applewhite/AP
Law & Courts School District Lawsuits Against Social Media Companies Are Piling Up
More than 200 school districts are now suing the major social media companies over the youth mental health crisis.
7 min read
A close up of a statue of the blindfolded lady justice against a light blue background with a ghosted image of a hands holding a cellphone with Facebook "Like" and "Love" icons hovering above it.
iStock/Getty