NewsMax.com
Tuesday, March 20, 2001

At issue was a succession of defiant "Marilyn Manson" shock-rock shirt depictions, including a three-face Jesus on the front and, on the rear, the word "believe" with the letters "lie" highlighted.

"Marilyn Manson," whose real name is Brian Warner, is an in-your-face performer who took his stage name from film actress Marilyn Monroe and mass-murderer Charles Manson.

According to the Associated Press:

The nation's highest court upheld, right down the line, the rulings of a federal district court in Ohio and the 6th United States Circuit Court of Appeals that found no free-speech violations in actions by Van Wert, Ohio, High School officials against the plaintiff, Nicholas J. Boroff, a senior at the time.

Boroff sued the school in 1997 after an administrator told him to turn the shirt inside out, go home and come back in a different shirt, or stay home as a truant.

The student opted to return – on each of the next four school days – wearing other "Marilyn Manson" T-shirts. Each time he was told he could not attend class wearing them, because they were so offensive.

That's when he sued, alleging his constitutional rights to free speech and due process had been violated.

The Supreme Court agreed with the two lower federal courts that:

• Public schools may ban shirts they deem "vulgar, offensive and contrary to the educational mission of the school."

• Shirts may be considered offensive, and thus permissible to ban, even if they are not obscene or have not caused a substantial disruption of the school program.

• School authorities documented the rock group had promoted drug use and Satanism with song lyrics containing racial epithets, obscene language and "exhortations to suicide and violence."

• The student's lawyers were wrong in contending, regardless of all that, the school could not prohibit its students from wearing the performer's name and picture.