It was almost predictable: The recent school walkouts by students across our area and the nation in the wake of the shootings that left 17 dead in Parkland, Florida, have brought calls for restrictions on these types of demonstrations. At least two school directors in Pennsylvania have brought up the issue to their respective school boards, but, so far, neither has taken any action, and neither board plans to. One was at the East Penn School District Board of Education meeting in Lehigh County earlier this week where director Carol Allen thought that the recent protests should have been after school hours or on weekends.

Allen fears that these types of protests might show the district in an unfavorable light because of their political overtones, especially when it comes to gun control issues. She cited the potential for riots and mass hysteria.

The East Penn board voted 5-1 against even bringing up the idea for discussion. Superintendent of Schools Michael Schilder agreed, saying that the students comported themselves in a respectful and responsible manner during two recent protests.

Some controversy has sprung up around these protests, but like it or not, these are examples of students exercising their First Amendment freedoms. Some school administrators did not see it so cut-and-dried. One district in Texas threatened to suspend students who participated in the March 14 walkout, the one-month anniversary of the Parkland shootings. School officials at Allentown High School also imposed some restrictions on the March 14 walkout.

The First Amendment has five components, although many believe it contains just three: Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press and Freedom of Religion. The other two are the right “to peaceably assemble” and the right to “petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

There have been numerous news articles about the intensity of these recent protests and observations that these students are heavily invested in seeing that something is done finally about gun violence in America.

The more recent school walkout, not nearly as well-supported as the first one, marked the 19th anniversary of the Columbine shootings in Colorado, the first major incident of its kind.

The truth is that there have been many instances of student protests in recent decades where their intensity and passion have been equally on display. The famous 1969 U.S. Supreme Court case Tinker v. Des Moines Independent School District also pitted protesting students against school officials.

In that landmark case, five students wore black armbands during a 1965 protest of the Vietnam War. The school suspended three of the older students for defying an order not to wear the armbands.

The Supreme Court upheld the lawsuit filed by the students and their parents. Justice Abe Fortas wrote that neither students nor teachers “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”

We saw a similar case in 2009 when the American Civil Liberties Union sent a letter to Palmerton school officials advising them that suspending students for wearing prisonlike garb during a protest of the high school’s new dress code violated their constitutional rights. Rather than take on the ACLU in court, administrators wisely relented and rescinded the suspensions.

As with all things legal, few are black and white. Tinker and later decisions acknowledged that while students have their First Amendment rights, they are not as extensive as those for adults, particularly on school property.

If school officials can prove that the students’ actions will “materially and substantially interfere” with the educational process or infringe on the rights of others, they do have the right to put the brakes on protests. The Supreme Court found in the Tinker case that the armband-wearing students did not disrupt the educational environment at the Des Moines school.

An infamous local case that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court four years ago involved two Easton Area Middle School girls, who came to class wearing “I love boobies” bracelets to call attention to breast cancer awareness.

School officials claimed the bracelets distracted the boys in the girls’ classes and suspended the students when they refused to remove the bracelets. The ACLU joined the case, and the local and state courts sided with the students and their parents. The school board, which spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in fighting the case, had no success with the appeal to the highest court in the land, which refused to hear the case.

By Bruce Frassinelli | tneditor@tnonline.com