If you’re a public school student, you don’t check your constitutional rights at the schoolhouse doors. But whether schools can punish you for speaking out depends on when, where, and how you decide to express yourself.
Open the menus below to learn more about your First Amendment rights in Maine.
Schools cannot punish students for missing class for a protest more harshly than for other reasons.
Your school's administration can discipline you for missing school, even if you miss school to participate in a political protest, because the law requires you to attend school. However, the school cannot punish you for missing school to participate in political protest more harshly than it punishes students who miss school for any other purpose.
For example, you might have to serve detention for missing school to attend a protest if detention is the typical punishment for unexcused absences, but only if your school assigns detention for all unexcused absences, regardless of the reason for the absence. You also have the same right to make up missed class work as any other student who has an unexcused absence for the particular classes you miss.
Schools should never lock exits to silence students.
Locking exits to the school can pose serious health and safety concerns for students and staff. If the school administration threatens to lock students in your school to prevent walkouts, students should immediately notify their parents and the district superintendent's office.
Your right to organize a protest at school depends on the specific activities you have planned and when the protest will take place.
Remember that your school can adopt reasonable rules that regulate the "time, place, and manner" of exercising your free speech rights. Thus, you cannot organize a protest if it will substantially disrupt the orderly operation of the school or if it will create the immediate danger of causing students to commit an act that is unlawful or in violation of school rules. But you can organize a peaceful, orderly protest at lunch or before/after school, for example.
Yes. The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees freedom of speech and freedom of the press to all people, including students.
This includes but is not limited to:
Yes. Even though you have broad rights to express your views in a variety of ways, your school can adopt reasonable rules that regulate the "time, place, and manner" of exercising these free speech rights.
Schools can have rules that have nothing to do with the message expressed, like dress codes. For example, a school can prohibit you from wearing hats because that rule is not based on what the hats say – but the school cannot ban hats that specifically support the NRA.
The school is not allowed to prohibit or censor speech or press activities based on its content (what you are saying), unless it falls within one of these two exceptions:
The law is clear about one thing: outside the classroom itself, school officials cannot just impose their own version of good taste and decency on what students say or write.
Schools cannot censor your speech except in very specific and limited circumstances.
School officials may believe that talking about topics like abortion or gun control are controversial, divisive, or in "bad taste," but they cannot censor those topics unless it falls within one of these two exceptions:
Even if your speech would provoke strong disagreement or upset some students, school officials cannot censor it.
