Are school walkouts protected by the First Amendment?

The national walkouts that students are currently organizing to call for new gun control legislation are commendable examples of “Generation Z” exercising its First Amendment freedoms. Unfortunately, students, teachers and other staff are likely to run up against legal limits around free speech and protest on school grounds.

On March 14, exactly one month after the Feb. 14 shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., students, teachers and administrators across the nation plan to walk out of their classrooms, at 10 a.m. in each time zone, for 17 minutes — one minute for each student and teacher killed in the attack. Another such event is scheduled for April 20, the 19th anniversary of the Columbine High School massacre in Colorado. More than 22,000 people have signed a petition pledging to walk out of their classrooms at 10 a.m. for the rest of the day.

Marches, walkouts and sit-ins are the embodiment of our core freedoms: the right to speak out, to assemble peaceably and petition our government for change.

The student voices in the Parkland movement call to mind the circumstances around the landmark 1969 Supreme Court decision Tinker v. Des Moines Independent School District, which also involved teens, schools and the freedom to protest.

In that case, the court considered a 1965 protest in which five students wore black armbands to protest the Vietnam War. Three older students were suspended by school authorities for defying instructions not to wear the armbands. Their parents filed a lawsuit and the Supreme Court found that this was a violation of the students’ First Amendment rights. Justice Abe Fortas wrote that neither students nor teachers “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”

But here’s an early caution to those planning school walkouts and protests on school grounds: The Tinker decision and later court cases also ruled that while students have First Amendment rights, they are not as extensive as those enjoyed by adults. Their free expression rights can be curtailed by school officials if they can prove that the student action would “materially and substantially interfere” with education in the school, or interfere with the rights of others.

For students: If your school district does not allow for participation in the walkouts, you could face penalties and punishment for disrupting the school day, violating school rules and potentially (although less likely) for intruding on the rights of students who do not walk out of class that day. For parents: Take this opportunity to work collectively with other parents and your school leaders on the larger civic lessons around this growing youth movement.

For school officials: You first face the decision of whether to forbid a walkout or to simply deal with the disruption caused by a walkout. Like the students, you should also consider that there may be another approach altogether. It is possible — perhaps in cooperation with students and parents — to turn the event into a teaching moment, in which all sides around the contentious, long-standing gun control debate are heard.

Given that we live in an age where there is much concern that young people don’t understand the Constitution or support free speech, punishing them for exercising it seems counterproductive, even if the Tinker decision does give school administrators that ability.

Political protest is a part of the history and governing process of the United States, from the Boston Tea Party protests to modern-day Tea Party marches and much more.

In other words, how about a little less “sit down” in response to the planned student walkout, and a little more “let’s talk” about the importance of citizen engagement in a democracy.