The Court famously opined, "It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.

"[1][2] On December 16, 1965, five students in Des Moines, Iowa, decided to wear black armbands to school in protest of American involvement in the Vietnam War and supporting the Christmas Truce that was called for by Senator Robert F. Kennedy.

Previous decisions, such as West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, had established that students did have some constitutional protections in public school.

It was funded by the Des Moines residents Louise Noun, who was the president of the Iowa Civil Liberties Union, and her brother, Joseph Rosenfield, a businessman.

[6] The court's 7–2 decision in favor of the students held that the First Amendment applied to public schools, and that administrators would have to demonstrate constitutionally valid reasons for any specific regulation of speech in the classroom.

Justice Abe Fortas wrote the majority opinion, holding that the speech regulation at issue in Tinker was "based upon an urgent wish to avoid the controversy which might result from the expression, even by the silent symbol of armbands, of opposition to this Nation's part in the conflagration in Vietnam."

"[8] The Court found that the actions of the Tinkers in wearing armbands did not cause disruption and held that their activity represented constitutionally protected symbolic speech.

Tinker was cited in the 1973 court case Papish v. Board of Curators of the University of Missouri, which ruled that the expulsion of a student for distributing a newspaper on campus containing what the school deemed to be "indecent speech" violated the First Amendment.

The court said the protection of student political speech created in the Tinker case did not extend to vulgar language in a school setting.

The court reasoned that the principal's editorial decision was justified because the paper was a non-public forum since it was school-sponsored and existed as a platform for students in a journalism class.

[12] In 2013, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit re-heard a case en banc that had been argued before a panel of three of its judges, considering whether middle school students could be prohibited from wearing bracelets promoting breast cancer awareness that were imprinted with "I ♥ Boobies!

Courts applying the "substantial disruption test" under Tinker have held that schools may prohibit students from wearing clothing with Confederate symbols.

[16] The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit said in Castorina v. Madison County School Board that based on Tinker and other Supreme Court rulings, the school board could not ban Confederate flag T-shirts while other "controversial racial and political symbols" like the "X" symbol associated with Malcolm X and the African American Muslim movement were permitted.

There, the three-judge panel upheld the district ruling unanimously, but the majority stated that Tinker could never apply to off-campus speech made by a student, while Judge Thomas L. Ambro believed this was too broad a claim.

to uphold the ruling in favor of the student, but overturning the decision of the Third Circuit in that Tinker may cover some parts of off-campus speech when the school has a compelling interest, such as for incidents of harassments or threats.