Bong hits 4 Jesus Case Limits Student Rights

Joseph Frederick was a senior on a mission when he set up his sign "Bong Hits 4 Jesus." His principal didn't like what his mission seemed to say and suspended the then 18 year old. It's taken 5 years but Frederick took his case to the Supreme Court.

Frederick wanted to prove that his freedom of speech had been limited. The justices ruling? 6-3that Frederick's free speech rights were not violated by his suspension. Frederick had lowered his banner in 2002 at his Juneau, Alaska, high school. As soon as Deborah Morse saw the wording she confiscated it and suspended Frederick. At that point Frederick began to weave his way through the legal system. "It was reasonable for (the principal) to conclude that the banner promoted illegal drug use-- and that failing to act would send a powerful message to the students in her charge," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court's majority. The three justices that agreed with Frederick were not enough to reverse the ruling. In dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens said, "This case began with a silly nonsensical banner, (and) ends with the court inventing out of whole cloth a special First Amendment rule permitting the censorship of any student speech that mentions drugs, so long as someone could perceive that speech to contain a latent pro-drug message." The issue isn't over religion. It's the word bong. Bongs have a drug background as a means for smoking cannabis and hashish. Now here's where the case gets a bit tricky. The banner was not on school grounds. It was on a public sidewalk. Here's the tricky part. Frederick was with his class witnessing the torch being carried through his town on route to Salt Lake City for the winter Olympics. The school said they were in their right to suspend Frederick and remove his banner because although he wasn't on the school grounds he was with his class at the time. He was also legally an adult. Even though he didn't win his case it hasn't hampered him. He is currently teaching English in China. Now 24, he told reporters in March that he displayed the banner in a deliberate attempt to provoke a response from principal Morse, by whom he had been disciplined previously. But Frederick claimed his message of free speech is very important to him, even if the wording of the infamous banner itself was not.

"I find it absurdly funny," he said. "I was not promoting drugs. ... I assumed most people would take it as a joke."