Federal courts are split over whether schools can ban bracelets that say “i ♥ boobies! (KEEP A BREAST).” The bracelets are part of a breast cancer awareness movement targeted at youth, but some middle and high school administrators view them differently. A petition for certiorari on this free speech issue is pending at the U.S. Supreme Court.
In its 1969 landmark First Amendment decision, Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, the Supreme Court held that school officials could not bar young people from wearing black armbands to school as a peaceful war protest. In 1986, though, in Bethel School District No. 403 v. Fraser, the high court said that officials could punish student speech that used vivid sexual imagery in a school assembly.
