The Law in Education – Student Speech and Advocacy – IDRA Classnotes Podcast 261

The Law in Education – Student Speech and Advocacy – IDRA Classnotes Podcast 261 | Classnotes Podcast 261

Classnotes Podcast (September 30, 2026). Students have long used their voices to influence schools, public policy and democracy. IDRA and SEAT discuss student protests and advocacy, constitutional free speech protections, Tinker v. Des Moines and the challenges young people face when speaking out.

Key Takeaways

Students retain constitutional free speech rights in public schools. Under Tinker v. Des Moines, schools generally cannot restrict student expression unless it causes a material and substantial disruption.
Student advocacy takes many forms, from testimony to public protest. SEAT helps students advocate before school boards, state and federal policymakers, and university leaders, including through a symbolic funeral protesting restrictions on academic freedom.
Schools should not favor one viewpoint over another. Applying rules differently based on the message students express can raise concerns about viewpoint discrimination.
Student speech is part of civic participation. Protecting young people’s ability to express ideas and engage with issues supports their development as civic participants and their role in democracy.

Resource from the Intercultural Development Research Association (IDRA), a nonprofit advancing education equity.

Student activism has long shaped U.S. democracy, from the Civil Rights Movement to today’s advocacy around education, racial justice and free expression. Yet many students now describe a growing fear of speaking out, raising important questions about whether constitutional protections for student advocacy remain meaningful in practice.

In this episode, IDRA summer law clerk Ámbar Caldwell is joined by Ayaan Moledina of Students Engaged in Advancing Texas (SEAT) and IDRA Chief Legal Analyst Paige Duggins-Clay, J.D., to explore the changing landscape of student speech. They discuss the role of youth activism in shaping public policy, the constitutional principles established in Tinker v. Des Moines, the dangers of viewpoint discrimination, and how current federal and state policies are influencing student advocacy in K-12 schools.

The conversation also examines how students are experiencing today’s political climate, including concerns about disciplinary consequences, self-censorship and the broader implications for civic engagement. Ultimately, the episode asks whether schools continue to serve as places where young people learn to participate in democracy, or whether fear of retaliation is creating a broader “descent in dissent.”

Whether you are an educator, policymaker, student or advocate, this episode offers an important discussion about free expression, constitutional rights and the future of student voice in U.S. schools.

Show length: 36:38 min.

Watch Podcast Video

Prev 1 of 1 Next

The Law in Education Student Speech and Advocacy IDRA Classnotes Video Podcast 261

Prev 1 of 1 Next

Quotes

“We are pulling up our seat, we are pulling up our chair, and we are going to have that representation, whether we are asked to or not.”

– Ayaan Moledina

“It’s scary, but we’re doing it because we know we have to, and because we know that if we don’t do it, nobody’s going to be able to represent our voice.”

– Ayaan Moledina

“Students need to learn and express themselves freely in these environments. So, I think these are important things for students to know, how the law protects them when they’re doing that and when they’re experimenting with that, and they’re becoming the leaders of our country and our world.”

– Ámbar Caldwell

“This is actually really, really important for young people’s development, for them to exercise civic engagement, and ultimately democracy.”

– Paige Duggins-Clay, J.D.

Resources

Tinker v. Des Moines: Students’ Freedom of Speech – This educational resource from the U.S. Courts provides an overview of the landmark Supreme Court decision that established students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.” It includes the facts of the case, the Court’s reasoning, and the decision’s lasting impact on student speech rights.
Tinker v. Des Moines Educational Resource

Students Engaged in Advancing Texas (SEAT) – a youth-led organization that empowers Texas students to advocate for equitable public education through organizing, leadership development, and civic engagement. Learn more about the organization and its ongoing advocacy efforts.

First Amendment and Student Speech – American Bar Association – The American Bar Association provides an overview of student free speech rights, including key Supreme Court decisions and how courts balance students’ constitutional rights with schools’ educational responsibilities.

Texas Senate Bill 12 (89th Texas Legislature) – Read the full text of Texas Senate Bill 12, which addresses parental rights, extracurricular activities, and restrictions related to diversity, equity, and inclusion in Texas public schools. The legislation is referenced in this episode’s discussion of the current K-12 policy landscape.

Listen to every episode!

To ensure you don’t miss a single episode of IDRA Classnotes, subscribe to the podcast in iTunes and Spotify, or sign up to receive an e-mail alert as soon as a new show is published.

FAQs

What free speech rights do students have in public schools?

Students retain First Amendment rights at school. Under the U.S. Supreme Court’s Tinker v. Des Moines decision, schools generally may not suppress student expression unless it causes a material and substantial disruption to the educational environment.

How are students at SEAT advocating for change?

Students Engaged in Advancing Texas (SEAT) supports young people advocating at school boards, the Texas State Board of Education, the Texas Legislature and the U.S. Capitol. SEAT also has used public protest, including a symbolic funeral for academic freedom that brought students, faculty and other participants together to call attention to restrictions on speech and academic freedom.

What is viewpoint discrimination in schools?

Viewpoint discrimination occurs when government restricts speech because it disagrees with the viewpoint being expressed. In schools, concerns can arise when officials treat similar forms of student expression differently based on their messages.

Can schools place limits on student speech?

Yes. The Supreme Court has recognized circumstances in which schools have greater authority to regulate speech, including certain school-sponsored expression, lewd speech and messages involving illegal drug use. But political expression that does not substantially disrupt school is afforded stronger protection.

Why are student speech rights important to democracy?

Paige Duggins-Clay, J.D., explains that the significance of Tinker extends beyond the immediate First Amendment question. Giving young people opportunities to exercise their rights supports their development, civic engagement and participation in democracy.

Show Notes

Ayaan Moledina: When we talk about SNCC and the East Los Angeles walkouts, these are not things that are taught in schools. That's something that we had to learn outside of school, right? We did our own research, we came through it through other programs, and so I think it's very important that we understand that young people are living in an entirely different political climate than what the people in power have been used to. Because of that, we bring such a different perspective, and I think we need to be able to listen to them and have their voices represented even more because of that.
Ámbar Caldwell: Welcome to the IDRA Classnotes podcast. My name is Ambar Caldwell, and I'm a law clerk here at IDRA. I want to orient our conversation with this quote, "Students do not shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate." That is a Supreme Court writing in 1969 in Tinker v. Des Moines. And more than 50 years later, students across the country are describing something different: a growing fear around political expression, activism, and protest. Some describe a chilling effect that discourages them from speaking out on controversial issues. Others argue that schools and government institutions are increasingly punishing dissent under the guise of maintaining order or safety. So what rights do students actually have? Are those rights changing? And what does the future of student advocacy look like for young people in today's political climate? Today we're joined by two guests who can help us answer those questions. Ayaan Moledina, federal policy director at Students Engage in Advancing Texas, or SEET, and IDRA's very own Paige Dickins Clay, our chief legal analyst. So first, I kind of want to dive into student activism as a democratic tradition, and I'm going to pose some questions to Ayaan first. So tell us a bit about SEET and the work your organization does.
Ayaan Moledina: Well, thank you for having me. And I just want to say that it's a huge honor to work with Paige on a day-to-day basis in IDRA, so very grateful to have you all as a partner. But Students Engage in Advancing Texas, or SEET, is an organization that works to get students a seat at the table, hence the name. And it comes from the famous quote attributed to Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm of, "If they don't give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair." So we are pulling up our seat, we are pulling up our chair, and we are going to have that representation whether we are asked to or not. And we focus on education policy broadly, and that touches many different things. That touches diversity in the classroom, that touches mental health, that touches gun violence prevention, that touches DEI overall in the community, that touches immigration. There's a whole bunch of things that are affecting young people nowadays that are encompassed by education, because all of these issues enter the classroom as well. When you're talking about immigration, you're seeing that those things are coming into the classroom as well, whether it's immigration agents coming into school, whether it's about students being pulled out and not being able to attend class because they're being detained by immigration agents. Whatever it may be, all of these issues are intersecting with education. So we are advocating at the local, state, and federal levels. So we give students the resources to advocate at their school boards, and then we bring them to the State Board of Education and the state legislature when we're in session. And then my job is to help folks come to the US Capitol in Washington, DC, and advocate there, and bring our experiences from Texas to the national stage. And that's really important because we see that what we're experiencing in Texas is not a monolith.
Ayaan Moledina: We are seeing that this is something that is happening across the country, and it's more effective, more powerful when we get to learn from other movements in other states who are facing similar challenges. So that's what we do, and we take that in the form of legislation that we help write and introduce, in the form of litigation, in the form of programs and fellowships and events and different things like that. So we try to cover all our different bases, and we really want to make sure that we're hearing from the folks who often go most unheard, folks from rural communities, Black and brown kids, folks from low socioeconomic statuses. And so we really try to make sure that those voices are at the forefront.
Ámbar Caldwell: And that's amazing work that you guys are doing at SEET. And I immediately start to think about the very social movements that students have bolstered and supported throughout history. I immediately think of SNCC, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Those students organized sit-ins, they were on the Freedom Rides and doing various voter registration efforts during the Civil Rights Movement, and more recently, March for Our Lives Movement, youth climate strikes. All of those things are so important and are the young people in our world, in our country, coming together to make the changes that they see fit for our world. And so I was just wondering too, has the climate for student activism changed during your time organizing, and what issues are students most concerned about today?
Ayaan Moledina: Overall, students seem to be engaged about the issue of democracy, and under that comes so many different things. That comes immigrants' rights, that comes racial justice, immigration. All of those different things fall under democracy and the core principles that our country was founded on, liberty and equality and justice for all, not for some, which unfortunately is what our country has come to today. And I think that young people are seeing how politics and policy is affecting their everyday lives and the lives of their peers, whether it's what they're allowed to learn, whether it's what they're allowed to say, where they're allowed to go, what they're allowed to do.
Ayaan Moledina: It is increasingly becoming, for lack of better words, authoritarian. And we're seeing that a lot of young people are scared. They're scared because they might have come to this country at a very young age, and they did not come through the legal pathways, but they are just as American as anybody else. But obviously, our country is not going to treat them as such in today's political climate. And so it has definitely changed since when I started doing political advocacy, it was during the pandemic, and that was also very much a very heated political climate. But I think it was different because we were all isolated at home, and we didn't have that face-to-face bigotry that we see nowadays. And now when I go to the State Board of Education, people are willing to say to my face that they think I'm not an American, they think I shouldn't be here, they think I should, quote, "Go back to where I came from." These are things that people are comfortable saying to someone's face. And I think that because of that, politics over the past few years have gotten even more extreme. Of course, it was divided during the pandemic.

The Trump administration had just ended, President Biden had just come into office. People were very unhappy about that, of course, and not everybody, but there were a good chunk of people who were unhappy about that. And then now we have Trump 2.0, and that is bringing back a lot of the rhetoric that we're seeing from the first time around. And that's why I think even among young people, we see there's a lot of lack of empathy, a lot of bullying, racism, because I think that students are seeing that the President of the United States can say these things and get away with it. And why can't they, right? If you look at the White House Correspondents' Dinner that happened two or three nights ago, and you see how he was telling a reporter from CNN, the chief White House correspondent for CNN, that she's a very attractive woman, but she needs to smile more. And he said that in front of millions of people, millions of people, and nobody's saying anything because that's the norm now. And so young people have grown up-- when Trump was first elected in 2016, I was, I guess, seven years old. And so this is really what I've grown up with, right? This is the norm. I don't know anything else. And I think that's really scary. And so for a lot of young people, we don't know that politics can be better than this, but we're trying to make it that. And I have immense respect for the March for Our Lives Movement, and thinking back to the students who led the fight during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s.

And I think that a lot of people say, "Our country has been through a lot of bad things worse than this. We'll get through this as well." And I do agree, we will get through this. But I do want to push back on the idea that we're not where we were back then. I do think we're there, and I think we're going to go even further. I think it's a different way, but in a certain manner, we are as far back as the 1960s because we are not allowing people to afford basic things like housing, healthcare. We're not allowing students to access an equitable education, right? When we talk about SNCC and the East Los Angeles walkouts, these are not things that are taught in schools, right? That's something that we had to learn outside of school, right? We did our own research. We came through it through other programs, but it was not something that was talked about in the [TEACs?], that's for sure. And so I think it's very important that we understand that young people are living in an entirely different political climate than what the people in power have been used to. And I think because of that, we bring such a different perspective, and I think we need to be able to listen to them and have their voices represented even more because of that.
Ámbar Caldwell: Yeah, and I think you bring up a great point of the fact that you have grown up in an environment, and a lot of students, where this is the norm, and this shouldn't be the norm. I want to highlight some things that have changed over recent history. We brought DEI, but eliminated DEI offices in Texas public universities. And many students say they have reduced institutional support for affinity groups and marginalized students, and academic freedom debates are also at the forefront of that. And I wanted to talk to you a bit about the deaths of free speech hearse action. What message were you guys hoping to send with that, and how did students and school officials respond? For our listeners, this was a protest where students and faculty staged a symbolic funeral to protest what they viewed as the erosion of academic freedom in Texas public universities and schools. And the demonstration featured a horse-drawn hearse, mourners dressed in black, and speeches mourning the death of academic freedom. So yeah, could you fill us in a bit too?
Ayaan Moledina: So when my colleagues brought this to me, that this is something they were thinking of doing, to be honest, at first I was like, "Wow, this is a terrible idea. This is not going to do anything. This is not going to change anything," because I'm a policy person, right? And I'm like, "This is a spectacle." Spectacles don't typically change policies directly. They might influence them, but they're not actually going to change them directly. But what I didn't realize at the time was how much they can influence it and how much of a message they can send. And I think for this moment, that's what people needed to wake up. And so my team put it together, and they did an absolutely incredible job. I mean, the outfits, the umbrellas, the black gloves. I mean, I got into it too. I was like, "This is very interesting." I had my fake cry that I was doing as I was walking through-- you can look at the videos and see me crying through the streets. But you could feel the solemnness in the air because it truly-- there there were people there who have been working in academia for several decades, who are now being put out of jobs, who are being censored.
Ayaan Moledina: And you have students who have come from across the country, across the world, for this amazing education that we're supposed to be providing. And now they don't even see themselves as a part of it. They're seeing this whitewashed version of history of what the people in power want them to be able to learn. And so it was very sad. And you could feel that. And you could feel how helpless many people felt because, despite how much we've worked at the State Capitol, working with administration, the Board of Regents, none of it seemed to have worked. All of it seemed to have fallen on deaf ears.
Ayaan Moledina: And so there was that sense of hopelessness. And that's why it was a funeral of, "This is something that is gone. Academic freedom, free speech, those are things that we can no longer claim to have in America." And I think that's a scary way to put it. And when I first heard that, I was like, "Well, does that mean we can get it back?" And I think so. I think that the version that we had is gone. But I think that with the right work, we can bring back a new and improved version. It won't be the same. But it's going to be the freedom that we need. And hopefully it'll be even stronger and better, but we have to work towards that.
Ayaan Moledina: And so we brought together so many people at UT Austin, at the University of North Texas. And we got students engaged in the actual fight of going before the Board of Regents and showing they are before us, they serve us. Many people didn't know that the Board of Regents existed or that you could go speak in front of them. But that is something that you can do. And that is something that we helped students be able to do. We helped professors be able to do that.
Ayaan Moledina: And it was a really powerful speech of us walking down Congress Avenue towards the Capitol and seeing that people were getting out of the way. And we had the horse-drawn carriage. And inside the carriage was books, was letters, were pens, were different things that represented academia. And it was gone. And it was very solemn, like I said. And I think that it goes back to Mary Beth Tinker back in the day when she was doing the same work at our age. They also carried a coffin through the school. And that's what they did is to demonstrate the lack of free speech and the censorship that she was facing. They carried a coffin through the school.
Ayaan Moledina: And at UT as well, several decades ago, we found this as we were doing research before this. We didn't know about it. But there were students several decades ago who did a very similar protest that you can find photos of them holding a coffin outside the UT Tower and then taking it all the way down to the Capitol just like we did. And so it was very special and very full circle in a way that we had no idea. And so this was a spectacle that I was hesitant about at first, but I'm really glad we did it.
Ámbar Caldwell: No, that was definitely a very inspiring choice of protest. And the symbolism behind that is also very important. And the fact that it's so connected to past protests is, I think, a really important message that students do make these changes, are [bullshitting?] these important movements. And it's important to look to the people who came before us and learn from them. And I also wanted to provide a bit of background as well. The UT System Board of Regents passed significant policy changes that give campus presidents the power to eliminate academic programs just without any faculty review. And you can just streamline the termination of tenured professors. And some of those changes included department consolidations.
Ámbar Caldwell: UT consolidated seven independent ethnic, gender, and European studies departments into two larger entities. And a lot of those merges were not something students wanted to see, not something the faculty wanted to see. And so that kind of shifts us now into what rights do students have? Many people assume students have broad constitutional protections to engage in these activities, but where do these protections come from? And that's where our chief legal analyst, Paige, comes in. So Paige, before we dive in, could you tell us a bit about the work you do at IDRA?
Paige Duggins-Clay: Sure can. Man, you don't even need me on this podcast. Ion is just laying down the law. I love it. This is what I do. This is why I do it, right? So, of course, everybody knows our organization's mission is to promote equal educational opportunity through strong public schools. And on our legal team, we think about that in a very specific way. We rely on a movement lawyering and, more specifically, a youth movement lawyering framework to do our work, which I could talk for days about that.
Paige Duggins-Clay: I'm going to try to not be a boring law professor here, but we really understand what Ion has both described and demonstrated even in the course of this conversation, right, that I can't really think of any policy legal victory for progressives, for people who are systemically marginalized, for education justice that happened without young people centered in that conversation. I mean, when you think about the powerful movements for accountability, for racial justice, for gender justice, environmental justice, I mean, young people are really powerful and really catalyzing.
Paige Duggins-Clay: What I love about working with and alongside young people and the movements that they co-create is that it really counters this totally misguided trope that people on the far right and certain policymakers have really tried to harness, which is that young people are minors and they have to be protected and they're very vulnerable. Look, I got four kids at various ages, right, including a five-year-old and an eight-year-old and also a high school student and a college student, right? And so providing those broad generalizations just doesn't make sense. And it denies the incredible power, potential, and opportunity that young people have to make change.
Paige Duggins-Clay: I mean, I think about people like Malala Yousafzai, for example, who literally survived a brutal attack and went on to just do incredible things and lead incredible movements, all the way to-- I mentioned Malala because Ion and I were literally in the same building as Malala Yousafzai recently when we were co-teaching a class at Harvard Law School.
Paige Duggins-Clay: So this is probably the part where I should say I'm super excited to work alongside Ion and the entire team at SEAT, not only as a partner in legal ad-vocacy, but also as one of their board members because I believe deeply in their vi-sion and want to see a better Texas, a better United States. And I think we can't do that without being arm-in-arm lockstep with those movements.
Ámbar Caldwell: Definitely. So I also wanted to talk a bit about the framework that kind of bolsters the fact that these students have these rights to speak on issues that affect them in their day-to-day. And that starts with Tinker v. Des Moines. Tinker arose after students wore black armbands to school to protest the Vietnam War. After they were suspended, the Supreme Court ruled that students do not lose their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse gate, and how schools generally may not suppress student speech unless it causes a material and substantial disruption. And that's in quotes too, to the educational environment. And we're going to dive more into what that means.
Ámbar Caldwell: But why is Tinker still considered the cornerstone of students' free speech rights? What is the significance of this case?
Paige Duggins-Clay: Yeah, absolutely amazing moment in terms of our constitutional history. And I think what often doesn't get talked about, speaking of history that gets erased or whitewashed, is that in addition to protesting the Vietnam War, right, the young people who were involved in that movement were also deeply interconnected with the civil rights movement, movement for racial and gender justice for people of all ages, but including and especially young people. And so we continue to see that interconnectedness of these issues. And the Supreme Court had a big question to answer, which really hadn't been definitively stated in the law at that time, which was, are young people, are youth, are minors who are generally speaking under law legally not recognized as a person, right, with the capacity to do things like vote until you reach a certain age, purchase alcohol? Those are the most common ones. Who can also have their bodies regulated in ways that adults cannot? Curfews, like the sorts of behaviors that they can engage in in public spaces, including schools. When you really think about the ways that the state regulates young people and minors and treats-- can't make contracts, there's sort of this fundamental question of, well, at what point do the rights of youth become concrete and solid and must be defended? And that gets debated in all sorts of contexts, right? It's not the subject today, right, but you think about it in the abortion context and education and healthcare. And so the law really struggles with that. So Tinker is important not only for education justice, for free speech and new civil rights, but also for just thinking more broadly about youth rights in the law. Because they said very definitively, look, and very careful balance, right, we recognize that schools, to fulfill their purpose and their mission, there has to be a baseline level of order, of conduct, and it's not inappropriate for the state through its educators to control the setting and to manage the behavior of young people while they're in that setting, right? That makes a lot of sense.
Paige Duggins-Clay: As adults, we have a responsibility to help cultivate the kind of environments that young people can thrive in, where they can be safe, and most importantly, where they can learn. The court said the other thing too, which is you can't take away all their rights without a good reason. Really at all, but especially without a good reason. And so that famous language of young people don't shed their rights at the schoolhouse gate, really meditating on and reflecting on-- and I think about that so much today in this current context, which I know we're getting into, is that a student's right to public education conferred by a state is really some of the only property that youth have, right? My colleague Sarah Kammiscoli and I write about this and talk about this a lot. It's really the only tangible legal right that a student has. They have a mandate to go to school, and they have a right to go to public school at every state in the country. It's not like they can own a home or own property or make contracts, right? So that right is so fundamental, and the way that students engage with that education must be protected, right? So I know that's a little bit loftier of a discussion than the typical explanation of Tinker, but everyone knows you don't shed your rights at the schoolhouse gate. There has to be a balancing of there being a substantial disruption versus a student's free speech right. But I think the broader recognition that this is actually really, really important for young people's development, for them to exercise civic engagement and ultimately democracy is honestly to me the most important part of this decision because it creates a foundation for all the things that come next.
Ámbar Caldwell: Yeah, and that's an important distinction too because what is a substantial disruption, right? And you're touching on that as well, like significant classroom disruption or threats of violence, widespread disorder, just disagreeing with what someone's saying, receiving complaints, something that's controversial, that's not enough. That's not a substantial.

Paige Duggins-Clay: Right.
Ámbar Caldwell: So we can get right into viewpoint discrimination as a central doctrine that's evolved past Tinker. It's not mentioned specifically in the case, but later doctrine of viewpoint discrimination becomes more clear to define in First Amendment cases, which explicitly hold that the government generally cannot favor one viewpoint over another. So just to be more frank, viewpoint discrimination occurs when the government restricts speech because it disagrees with the message being expressed, and courts frown on that. They treat that as one of the most serious First Amendment violations because the government is expected to remain neutral when regulating speech.
Ámbar Caldwell: So I think you kind of delved into why viewpoint discrimination or just discrimination of students' ability to speak freely about ideas and exchange ideas is harmful. But in a school setting specifically, what does that mean? And what does that look like for maybe students who are listening to this? How is that shaped?
Paige Duggins-Clay: Yeah. I mean, I can give you the obnoxious lawyer answer, right? It depends, but I won't do that, but it kind of does. But the court has given us some useful landmarks to sort of orient ourselves to this topic, right? So, for example, there is a balance between keeping a, quote-unquote, orderly school environment and addressing school safety issues and the substance of students' political free speech or ideas. And so one really important test of the Tinker principle came in a case shortly after Tinker called Bethel v. Fraser. And in that case, there was a ques-tion about to what extent can students create their own and articulate their own ideas and thoughts, but in a forum managed and maintained by a public school. So in Bethel, it was, I think, the school newspaper or the school yearbook, something like that. They had an article that was very provocative, and the school was like, "No, you can't put this in our publication." And the Supreme Court came back and said, "Yeah." At that point, it's not just the students' speech, but the students' speech is now intertwined with the school's speech and school platforms, right? And so in that space, schools can really step in and do more regulation. And that's a pretty sensible principle, though it can be with the right set of facts or the wrong set of facts, right? It can be abused, and cases have tested that. Same thing about lewd speech, right? Students have free speech, but you can't use profanity. You can't be vulgar. I think I actually got the cases mixed up. Hazelwood is the one that involved the newspaper.
Paige Duggins-Clay: So I've been backwards. So thank you. Thank you. It's coming back to me now. Hazelwood was the newspaper. Bethel was the vulgar, lewd case. There was a student's speech that involved a lot of very, again, provocative, racy words, profanities, lots of sexual innuendos, and by all accounts, it was incredibly funny, but did violate the school's conduct rules. And the court was like, "Yeah, look, this is an audience of students who have different developmental stages. We have the right to regulate that behavior, that sort of lewd speech." So you have Bethel and Hazelwood on the one side. You have Morse v. Frederick, which is the Bong Hits 4 Jesus case. If y'all haven't heard of that one, go look it up. It's a fun, interesting case where a student unfurls a banner saying, "Bong hits 4 Jesus," as part of a demonstration at a school-adjacent function. And the school's like, "Yeah, it's about drugs. We can't allow that here." So those give you some of the categories, right, where the court has said very clearly, "Yeah, schools can regulate drugs and alcohol, lewd behavior, or crass, inappropriate profanity, school-sponsored, school-sanctioned speech." On the other side of that, what we can't do, right, is tinker, right? Armbands that are not disruptive, but that demonstrate a message. T-shirt is a big concept, right? Having a generally neutral dress code that applies to everyone is one thing, but regulating a T-shirt and the content on a T-shirt-- and looking at, for example, a Black Lives [MATTER?] T-shirt different than you would look at an NRA T-shirt, right? That's getting us closer to viewpoint discrimination, whether it goes one way or the other. And so when we look at these cases [and?] this history, it really comes down to, "Are we preferencing one person's perspective over someone else?"
Ámbar Caldwell: Yeah. And I think that's an important distinction. And I think that's kind of this line that students are unsure of, and maybe parents as well, of, "What can their student do in these environments?" Because there's a line too of like, "Teachers want to create an environment that's safe and conducive to learning, and administrators want to make sure that the environment, to some degree, is calm and conducive to learning," so. But also students need to learn and express themselves freely in these environments. So I think these are important things for students to know how the law protects them when they're doing that and when they're experimenting with that and they're becoming the leaders of our country and our world. So I want to kind of wrap this up by talking to both Ayan and Paige, just asking you guys both-- what concerns you most about the future of student speech? But also, what gives you hope? And either of y'all can take that one. Ayan, do you want to go first?
Ámbar Caldwell: Sure. I think the biggest concern right now is the continued censorship of young people in schools. We know that the 90th legislature is about to begin in January, and we are already having conversations with legislative offices about what bills they're going to file. And it's pretty scary. They are ready to file some bills that, I mean, allow kids to bring guns into the school and do all sorts of crazy things. These are things that I've just heard in the past few weeks. And I am afraid that if we think now is bad, they're going to have a, "Oh. You just wait," moment. And I think that what gives me hope is the fact that a lot of adult-led organizations are starting to partner with youth-led organizations. And I think together, like Paige said, these movements have to go hand in hand. That is the only way we succeed. We cannot have successes here and there for this group and this group. It has to be together. That's why we work so closely with the Texas AFT. We work with our labor partners and the educators, and we work with the PTA and the parents, and we work with, of course, our litigators and our education policy folks.
Ámbar Caldwell: And you have to have all those stakeholders in place to be successful. So that's one thing that gives me hope. The second thing is students being willing to learn from the past and understanding what SNCC did, what March for Our Lives has done, and how we're going to bring that to today. And looking at the coffin that was carried down Congress Avenue several decades ago and how we're recreating that now and bringing students to testify before the legislature, before the state board of education, before the board of regents. Young people are running for office. Young people are doing the things that I think a lot of adults are also scared to do. And it's scary, but we're doing it because we know we have to and because we know that if we don't do it, nobody's going to be able to represent our voice in the best way possible. And so that's what gives me hope is the number of young people that are aware of what's going on. And not just aware. It's one thing to be aware and not do anything. It's another thing to be aware and actually be willing to go outside your comfort zone and do something. And we're seeing an increasing amount of young people who are willing to do that. Ones who have never been politically engaged. Ones who have been very apathetic. We're seeing folks going out voting, going to protests, going and testifying, and really just getting involved in the movement to save our democracy.
Paige Duggins-Clay: I love this so much, and I love working with you, Ayan [and then we'll see?]. And so just thank you and all of your colleagues for just your amazing leadership. Y'all inspire me every day just with what you do. I was thinking about when you were describing the hearse situation, the funerals for academic freedom. I will never forget. I get to do all sorts of fun things as a youth movement lawyer. And [Einhorn's?] colleague, Cameron, executive director and co-founder of [SEAT?], calls me and says, "I have a weird legal question for you, [Paige?]." And I always love this moment because I'm like, "What am I going to get now?" And they were like, "Oh, yeah, we want to bring in a horse-drawn carriage and have a hearse on campus. Can we do that? Do we need insurance for that?" It was just like, "You got to love it, man."

And so part of it is the innovation, the curiosity, the campiness, right, just the energy that young people bring to movements, to legal work, which is usually very frustrating and, frankly, boring sometimes, very dry, to policymaking. It brings joy, and I witness that on a regular basis. And it brings new ideas and new recommitment to the future. So I mean, all of that just gives me a huge amount of hope. What concerns me? I know I should have started with the concern because the hope is the feel-good thing. So I'll try to instill it on a positive note too. What concerns me is adults are figuring it out, right? Adults are figuring out how powerful youth voice and youth action is. And so it is not a coincidence that people who are not interested in protecting or advancing democracy are targeting schools and targeting young people, whether it's regulating their bodies, their minds through education, their ability to access and participate in civic life, their ability to be their authentic selves in all of these settings, what books they can read. It is not a coincidence that we have seen, I think, really, one of the most unprecedented assaults on youth identity, both as a political entity but also as a expression of their purest sense of themselves. And it's because they're powerful. And so Mark Twain, I think, is the one who said, "History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes." I'm with you, Einhorn. I think this is a very serious moment for our country and for our democracy.

And I think that I'm very worried about the ways that the state and the federal government are targeting the really powerful platforms and strategies that young people use, whether it's overregulating social media, which is a powerful platform that young people are connecting with and engaging on these topics, whether it's against schools and school speech and college university speech, whether it's phone access and internet access, right, access to books, whether it's your right to peacefully protest and walk out. We saw so many young people walking out in solidarity with undocumented and immigrant families, right, to protest that brutality, all of that. I'm concerned about the way that they are sort of very precisely targeting those spaces, but that concern is greatly diminished and outweighed by, again, the curiosity, the intelligence, and the genius and the creativity of young people who are engaged, mobilized, and supported by aligned adults. So I'm happy to be one of them, and I'm so excited to see what will come next. And despite the rise in authoritarian suppression, I'm very confident that we will get out on the other side of this.
Ámbar Caldwell: You both are so inspiring. Thank you both for joining us and for sharing your insights. Now, to our listeners, if you'd like to learn more about the talk that we discussed today, be sure to check out the resources and related episodes linked in this episode's description. To ensure you don't miss a single episode of ID-RA Classnotes Podcast, subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also sign up to receive an email whenever a new epi-sode is released by visiting idra.org. Thank you for listening, and we'll see you next time on IDRA Classnotes Podcast.

[music] Thank you for listening to IDRA Classnotes. For more information on IDRA and other Classnotes topics, go to www.idra.org. You can also send us your thoughts by email to podcast@idra.org.

Resource Center