School administrators around the country are punishing students for speaking out on issues ranging from abortion and homosexuality to drug use and the war in Iraq. And the Supreme Court appears poised to side with school administrators and — for no compelling reason — limit a landmark 1960s precedent aimed at safeguarding pupils’ free-speech rights.

In oral arguments in March, the Juneau school board will ask the justices to uphold an Alaska high school student’s 10-day suspension for unfurling a pro-drug-use banner to display as the Olympic torch relay passed by the school in 2002. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the suspension violated Joseph Frederick’s First Amendment rights. But the school board, backed by the National School Boards Association, maintains that upholding the ruling would hinder schools’ anti-drug programs and subject school administrators to damage suits in a murky area of law.

Similar cases dot dockets around the country. In Williamstown, Vt., a student went to court after he was disciplined for wearing a T-shirt identifying President Bush as “Chicken-Hawk-in-Chief” and adorned with drug and alcohol imagery. A student in Poway, Calif., challenged his suspension for wearing a T-shirt inscribed with the words “Homosexuality Is Shameful.” The Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian religious liberty advocacy group, is backing the California student’s cause and also has filed federal lawsuits on behalf of students in New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia who were barred from wearing anti-abortion T-shirts or distributing anti-abortion literature.

The Supreme Court established the basic precedent in 1969, when it overturned the suspensions of three Iowa teenagers who came to school wearing black armbands to protest the Vietnam War. Students do not “shed their constitutional rights . . . at the schoolhouse gate,” the court observed in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District. In subsequent rulings, the court decided to read that precedent narrowly. In 1986, it upheld the suspension of a Washington state student for injecting “patently offensive” sexual metaphors into his speech in favor of a candidate for high school student council president. In 1988, it said schools could censor student newspapers — in the case, by spiking a story on teenage pregnancy — if the newspaper was “an integral part of the school’s educational function.”

In the name of preventing drug use, the court has also allowed school authorities to limit students’ constitutional rights against unreasonable searches. In 1985, it upheld the search of a student’s purse (marijuana was found), even though the principal lacked probable cause to believe she was carrying drugs. In 1995 and again in 2002, the court said schools may require students to submit to random drug tests as a condition of participating in varsity athletics or any other extracurricular activity.

Even in Tinker, the court recognized that students’ free speech rights could be limited when necessary to prevent disruption or to protect the rights of other students. But Justice Abe Fortas tellingly added that open discussion — “hazardous freedom,” in his words — was “the basis of our national strength.”

Lower federal courts applying the Supreme Court’s precedents have tended to favor students. In the Vermont case, for example, the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the school board’s view that the T-shirt’s drug and alcohol images were “plainly offensive” or interfered with an “integral” school function of discouraging drug use.

On the other hand, the 9th Circuit refused to stop the Poway school board from enforcing its rule against wearing anti-gay messages. School officials had grounds to believe such displays were “injurious to gay and lesbian students and interfered with their right to learn,” the court said. The student has appealed to the Supreme Court.

Given the reality of anti-gay harassment and violence in public schools, the decision is not without justification. As in the anti-abortion cases, however, the Alliance Defense Fund lawyers have grounds to complain that school authorities sometimes single out “pro-life” or “pro-family” views for censorship. Indeed, the Poway teenager wore the T-shirt on the same day that many students were observing, with the school’s apparent approval, a “Day of Silence” to support gay and lesbian schoolmates.

In Juneau, Frederick’s stunt — displaying for TV cameras a banner that read “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” — can easily be dismissed as sophomoric. He muddied the case by saying the phrase was meaningless nonsense, not a pro-drug message. Still, school officials are making a far-reaching argument, that the banner was “offensive” and interfered with the school’s “mission” of deterring illegal drug use. Under that reasoning, the Des Moines school board might have won the Tinker case by claiming support for U.S. troops in Vietnam as part of its “mission.”

In fact, the public schools’ most important mission is to prepare students for democratic governance in a country with what the Supreme Court has called “a profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open.” That lesson is never too early for students to learn — or for teachers and principals to teach.

Kenneth Jost is the Supreme Court editor for CQ Press.