On February 14, 2014, Judge Nguyen of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit opined that parents’ First Amendment challenge to a public elementary school’s mandatory student uniform policy must be upheld.The Ninth Circuit had previously held in Jacobs v. Clark County School District (2008) that a public school’s mandatory uniform policy survived First Amendment scrutiny. But in this more recent case, Frudden v. Pilling, the policy was somewhat different than the policy that had been at issue in Jacobs. Importantly, the uniforms at issue in Frudden bore the words “Tomorrow’s Leaders,” whereas the uniforms at issue in Jacobs bore no words at all.
The school in Frudden imposes penalties upon those students who do not wear its uniform, but there are exemptions to that rule, such as one for students who wear “the uniform of a nationally recognized youth organization such as Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts on regular meeting days.”
