United States Third Circuit

Preliminary injunction enjoining defendant school district from prohibiting plaintiff from passing out invitations to her church Christmas party at her elementary school is affirmed, where: 1) the student-speech rights announced in Tinker inhere in the elementary school context, and thus the Tinker material risk of substantial disruption test applies; 2) the district court correctly held that plaintiff's speech does not fall into any of the exceptions to the Tinker rule, and thus, forum analysis does not apply; 3) defendant's failure to identify any disruption caused by plaintiff's invitation, makes it reasonably likely that plaintiff will prevail in this litigation; 4) defendant's policies are unconstitutional as applied to the form of student expression at issue here; 5) plaintiff satisfies the other three prongs of the preliminary injunction test; and therefore, 6) the district court did not abuse its discretion in granting a preliminary injunction.

Appellate Information

• Decided 03/12/2013
• Published 03/12/2013

Judges

• VANASKIE

Court

• United States Third Circuit

Counsel