Sample Student Speech Exam Question (Suggested time: 1 hour) (50 points)

Paul Park is a 16 year-old junior at the High School for Social Justice (HSSJ), a public high school. HSSJ has a specialized curriculum that includes a variety of social justice issues. Students like Paul Park who join the Social Justice Club, one of the school’s major extracurricular clubs, are encouraged by the club’s advisor, a government teacher at the high school named Nat Fraser, to create a social justice project in which they develop a plan to advocate for a social justice issue they select and work to implement their social justice plan. The work on the social justice project is not a required part of the curriculum, is not part of a course for credit, is not graded, and is not supervised by Mr. Fraser unless a student seeks his assistance. Mr. Fraser does, however, display information about the various social justice projects created by members of the Social Justice Club on a bulletin board in his classroom.

Paul Park, who joined the Social Justice Club when he was a sophomore, decided to develop a social justice plan to advocate for changes in the alcohol beverage control laws to allow some teenage purchase and consumption of alcoholic beverages. To accomplish this goal, he created an organization called Support Legalization of Alcohol for Minors (SLAM). Paul believes that the current alcohol beverage laws that prevent people under the age of 21 from purchasing or being served alcohol are unfair as well as foolish and do not encourage responsible drinking.

In implementing his social justice plan, Paul Park created a variety of social media pages to publicize and gain public support for his SLAM organization. He created all of the social media pages using his home computer. The social media pages, in addition to containing the SLAM name and logo (a wine glass with the number 16 and an up arrow on the glass), provide information about the laws in other countries that allow underage drinking, the lower rates of drunk driving and other alcohol-related problems in those countries, a proposed law that would legalize the sale and consumption of alcoholic beverages with low alcohol content to persons 16 and older, and the opportunity to purchase SLAM t-shirts. His t-shirts include the SLAM name and logo and various slogans including “You’re old enough. Support Legalization of Alcohol for Minors” and “Sweet 16 and ready to drink. Support Legalization of Alcohol for Minors.”

In addition to the social media pages and the SLAM t-shirts, Paul prepared a flyer that contained information about SLAM, links to its social media presence, and advertisements for the t-shirts that could be purchased. He brought copies of the flyer to school and handed them out to students in the hallways between classes and in the cafeteria. As a result of the flyers, 20 students asked Paul Park if they could purchase SLAM t-shirts. He told them that they could order them on any of SLAM’s social media pages and that he would bring them to school after they placed an order. As a result, over a several week period Paul delivered t-shirts to 20 of his classmates who began to wear the shirts to school.

When they were worn to school, the shirts caused comments in the hallways and discussions in the cafeteria and during recess about SLAM and whether Paul’s proposed law was a good idea or not. In addition, the parents of 8 students who bought the shirts and wore them to school called Sylvia Sanchez, the high school principal, to complain that their children, some as young as 14, were wearing the SLAM shirts promoting underage drinking. They were upset that the school would allow a student to promote something as dangerous as drinking alcohol.

After receiving the phone calls from upset parents, and anticipating that other parents would complain as well, the principal called Paul Park into her office. She told him that his conduct in promoting SLAM to students at the school by distributing flyers and t-shirts to HSSJ students violated the student conduct code because it qualified as disruptive conduct. Ms. Sanchez asked Paul to cease promoting SLAM at school or he would be disciplined for violating the student conduct code. In response, Paul told Ms. Sanchez that he believed he had a First Amendment right to continue to promote SLAM. Since Paul Park refused to cease promoting SLAM at school, Ms. Sanchez told him that she had no choice, but to suspend him for 5 days.

After unsuccessfully appealing his suspension to the School Board, Paul Park’s parents brought a lawsuit on his behalf against the High School for Social Justice and Principal Sanchez claiming that his First Amendment rights were violated by suspending him for distributing SLAM flyers and t-shirts at school.

You are a law clerk to the judge assigned to the case. The judge asks you to write a memorandum detailing the First Amendment arguments available to Paul Park to challenge his suspension as well as the First Amendment arguments available to the High School for Social Justice and Principal Sanchez to defend the decision to suspend Paul Park.