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US students win right to wear 'I ♥ Boobies' bracelets

10/03/14
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The US Supreme Court has denied a school district's appeal of a lower court ruling that students had the right to  wear "I ♥ Boobies" breast-cancer-awareness bracelets, according to Reuters.

The two students sued the school district, under the First Amendment, which barred them from wearing the bracelets after they reported some boys reacting immaturely to the bracelets by chanting "I love boobies" and "boobies, boobies".

The lower court ruled last year that: "A school's leeway to categorically restrict ambiguously lewd speech, however, ends when that speech could also plausibly be interpreted as expressing a view on a political or social issue. "

However, one of the dissenting judges also noted: "As this case demonstrates, running a school is more complicated now than ever before. Administrators and teachers are not only obliged to teach core subjects, but also find themselves mired in a variety of socio-political causes during school time.

"The decisions school administrators must make regarding the deportment of their students — what they say, what they wear, or what they do — require common sense and good judgment. Many of those decisions will involve matters about which reasonable people can disagree."

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CompliSpace

CompliSpace is Ideagen’s SaaS-enabled solution that helps organisations in highly-regulated industries meet their governance, risk, compliance and policy management obligations.

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