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Web Extra: Hitler Youth Buttons Allowed at School

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Meeting Notice: NJSBA Executive Committee

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A federal court on Sept. 20 allowed two Bayonne students to protest the district’s mandatory uniform policy by wearing buttons that pictured a Hitler youth group.  

In DePinto v. Bayonne Bd. of Ed., the U.S. District Court of New Jersey issued an injunction, sought by the students’ parents, preventing the school district from suspending the fifth-graders.  The buttons at issue showed young boys dressed in uniforms and facing the same direction.  Although no swastikas were displayed, school officials and the students’ parents agreed that the buttons depicted members of the Hitler Youth. The photograph had a red circle with a slash superimposed on it with the phrase “No School Uniforms.” 

School officials warned the parents that the students would be suspended if they continued wearing the buttons to school. 

Substantial Disruption Because some faculty and parents found the Hitler Youth image to be offensive and because of the students’ age, the district argued that it could prohibit students from wearing the buttons without violating their right to free expression. 

The District Court, however, found the issue in the Bayonne case to be similar to that in a 1969 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, which upheld the right of students to wear black armbands to protest the Viet Nam war. The high court ruled that a student may not be punished for merely expressing views unless the school had reason to believe that the speech would cause substantial disruption or impinge upon the rights of others. 

In DePinto, the District Court noted that the image on the button did not contain profanity or sexual innuendo, nor did it depict obvious symbols of hate or racial divisiveness. 

“If the students in this case had displayed a swastika, a confederate flag, or a burning cross, then this Court’s analysis would differ greatly,” the court explained parenthetically.