Civil Liberties Test

What happens when freedoms and protections collide? There are a few things which could happen. The cases which I am observing are "Bethel v. Fraiser", dealing with the 1st amendment, "Veronia School District 47 v. Acton" and "Mapp v. Ohio", which are both a conflict dealing with the 4th amendment, and "Goss v. Lopez” is dealing with the 14th amendment.

Firstly, "Bethel v. Fraiser", in which during a school assembly, a student, Fraiser, gave a speech which dealt with inappropriate sexual innuendos. The school decided that he should be suspended for two days. Fraiser claimed that it was his freedom of speech, the first amendment, while the school complained that it was their duty to protect the student body, primarily the freshman, from hearing these remarks. In the end, the school ended up winning the case, the court declaring it was constitutional for them to punish this individual for his actions. The "freedoms" of Fraiser collided with the "protection" of other students, and in this specific case, the protections of the students from the obscenities of his speech were more important.

Secondly, "Mapp v. Ohio", Mapp was convicted of possessing obscene materials, mostly pornography, after an illegal police search. Since the search warrant was specifically for drugs, when they found this illegal material, the police decided that they would charge her for this. Due to the 4th amendment, the evidence obtained against Mapp, which was obtained during the search warrant for something else, their use of this evidence against her was unconstitutional, and the charges were dropped. In this instance, Mapp's freedom to, "search and seizure" was protected even though her ownership of illegal drugs was harmful. It wasn't fair to be charged in that circumstance.

Next, "Goss v. Lopez", students at a high school were given 10 day suspensions by the principal and not given a chance to have a hearing until after their suspensions were given. The students claimed that due to the 14th amendment, they deserved a hearing, because of Due Process. The court rules, in a 5-4 decision, that the students were constitutionally protected and they did deserve a hearing before the suspensions were issued. The freedom of the student to have a hearing was constitutional, while "protecting" the students by removing these kids as soon as possible was infringing on their rights.

Lastly, "Veronia School District 47 v. Acton", which deals with high school student, Acton, who decided that he was not required to perform a drug test, and was ultimately suspended from playing football by the school. The question was whether or not it was constitutional for the school to do this, because of the 4th amendment clause, dealing with search and seizure. In the end, the school won because the concern over safety, or protection, of the athletes overrides the intrusion of student’s privacy.

In conclusion, these cases show that there is no fine line between protections and freedoms, and it always depends on the case.