Students around the country have staged school walkouts in the last month to protest federal immigration enforcement tactics—drawing concerns about their safety from school administrators and criticism from conservative leaders opposed to their cause.
The student protests follow the killing of two civilians by federal officials in Minneapolis, where a surge of confrontational enforcement actions have attracted national attention.
The biggest wave of action came Jan. 30, when thousands of middle and high school students in communities large and small walked out of school. It was part of a “National Shutdown,” during which immigration advocates urged people to walk out of school, stay home from work, and avoid spending money. But individual schools in states from Minnesota to Texas have seen smaller walkouts before and since.
The activities put school and district administrators in the center of heated national political battles, logistical challenges, and broader concerns about how to respect students’ First Amendment rights.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican who is running for Senate, said Feb. 2 that his office would investigate the Austin school district to determine whether schools “facilitated” the student protests, whether public funds were spent, and whether any laws were violated.
“Parents expect our public schools to educate and keep their kids safe during the school day, not encourage them to attend a protest field trip designed to villainize brave law enforcement officials protecting our country,” Paxton said in a news release.
The next day, the Texas Education Agency threatened sanctions, including a loss of funding or a state takeover of districts that don’t accurately document walkout-related absences.
Maryland Rep. Andy Harris, a Republican, wrote on social media that the “federal government should de-fund any high school that condones this in any way.”
Student walkouts raise logistical, legal questions for schools
The Austin school district did not respond to a request for comment.
In a Jan. 30 letter posted on the district’s website, Superintendent Matias Segura said student walkouts on 14 campuses were “not sponsored or endorsed” by the district or any of its schools. Staff “cannot physically prevent a student from choosing to leave campus,” and doing so would result in an unexcused absence, he wrote.
“It is always our desire to have our students in our classrooms during instructional hours,” Segura wrote. “During the school day, our students are our responsibility and we’re committed to the safety of our students in our community, regardless if they are on our campus. That is why our administrators and Austin ISD Police remain with our students during protest activities during school hours.”
Districts around the country have issued similar warnings about discipline. In Plainfield, Ind., for example, leaders warned students that they’d face a three-day suspension for insubordination if they left school without permission and encouraged them to “explore an alternate platform to support a cause.”
Student walkouts have been a fixture of protest movements going back to the Vietnam War. But students have found it much easier to organize across state and district lines with the advent of social media, causing larger scale school disruptions.
In 2018, students in more than 2,000 communities staged coordinated school walkouts to call for stronger gun restrictions after a former student killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. Smaller clusters of walkouts followed the 2020 killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, states’ efforts to change curricula or restrict discussions of race and sexuality, and COVID-19 precautions in schools.
After those protests, district leaders told Education Week that they’d sought to communicate with student organizers so they could anticipate the disruption. Some worked with police to patrol busy intersections in an effort to protect students from traffic, but not to condone any particular political viewpoint. Some even created walkout plans to direct educators’ responses.
Students don’t shed their rights to expression ‘at the schoolhouse gate’
Courtroom battles over student protests have led to “real and lasting developments in First Amendment law,” said Alex Morey, a First Amendment specialist at the Freedom Forum, which advocates for free speech rights.
In the 1969 case of Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a school could not prohibit students from wearing black armbands to protest the Vietnam War. Courts have upheld students’ speech rights in the time since, echoing a standard established in Tinker that schools can only intervene if their actions cause “substantial disruption.”
“It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate,” the court wrote in a majority opinion.
“But what happens when students walk through those gates for the school day and then walk back out?” Morey asked.
There may be nothing more disruptive than leaving school entirely, Morey said. But schools’ responses to walkouts must be viewpoint-neutral, and not be seen as favoring or disfavoring one cause or another, she said. In the case of walkouts, that might include schools issuing the same discipline for students who leave in protest as they do for students who ditch class to play video games, and ensuring consistent responses for protests in support of left-leaning or right-leaning causes. Guidance from states including California and Texas include similar cautions about neutrality.
Guidance from the federal Readiness and Emergency Management for Schools technical assistance center offers tips for communicating with families and law enforcement.
In addition to threats of sanctions for districts, the Texas guidance warned that individual educators could be at risk of consequences if they organize or encourage walkouts.
“Texas public school leaders partner with educators and families to help students succeed and to prepare them to be active and engaged citizens after they graduate,” the guidance says. “However, schools have a responsibility and duty to keep students safe as they seek to help them learn.”
