A protest influenced a major Supreme Court case. The protest occurred in “November 1965, about [one-hundred and forty] anti-Vietnam War groups staged a ‘march on Washington,’ which drew an estimated twenty-five thousand participants” (Johnson 1). This compelled John Tinker, Mary Beth Tinker and Christopher Eckhardt, to take a stand against the Vietnam War. The Tinker’s and Eckhardt protest reached the Supreme Court, on claims to the violation of their First Amendment rights. To have a complete understanding of the Tinker v. Des Moines Independent School District court case, one must identify the reasons the teenagers protested, analyze the Supreme Court’s decision, and examine the impact on schools. Around 1965, many Americans supported the Vietnam War, but sometimes the people who did not started protests (“Expression vs. Disruption”). People heard about Vietnam catastrophes through magazines or television broadcasts, after discovering the truth, they …show more content…
Des Moines case affected many people and institutions. Within a year following the Tinker v. Des Moines trial, law schools published many works about the case, the outcome, and the opinions (Johnson 187). A law professor, William Geimer stated, for himself, “Tinker vs. Des Moines was one of the few children’s-rights cases that actually upheld the rights of minors with-out being transparently patronizing” (Johnson 211). An anonymous essayist noted “within a year after the Tinker case the Supreme Court had already refused to hear many cases involving student appearance and conduct,” the article was published in the Georgetown Law Journal (Johnson 188). The Supreme Court refused to hear the cases because “First Amendment rights can be overcome only by showing that free speech must be suppressed in interest of some greater public concern,” (“Commentary”). It would not be long before the Supreme Court dealt with another student rights