Barr v. Lafon’s Empirical Analysis
538 F.3d 554 · 2008
Citation profile
17 federal appellate · 2 district ·
How this case has been cited
Cited by 43 later decisions — most recently May 2025 · most notably Biegas v. Quickway Carriers, Inc. (2009), American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, Inc. v. Miami-Dade County School Board (2009)
17 federal appellate · 2 district ·
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Applies 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act))
Relies on Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc. · Celotex Corporation v. Catrett H · Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District · Police Department of Chicago v. Mosley · Rav v. City of St Paul Minnesota
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 43 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[t]he above trilogy of cases yields three principles: (1) under Fraser , a school may categorically prohibit vulgar, lewd, indecent, or plainly offensive student speech; (2) under Hazelwood, a school has limited authority to censor school-sponsored student speech in a manner consistent with pedagogical concerns; and (3) the Tinker standard applies to all other student speech and allows regulation only when the school reasonably believes that the speech will substantially and materially interfere with schoolwork or discipline.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““Public education must prepare pupils for citizenship in the Republic.... It must inculcate the habits and manners of civility as values in themselves conducive to happiness and as indispensable to the practice of self-government in the community and the nation.” Fraser, 478 U.S. at 681 , 106 S.Ct. 3159 (quoting C. Beard & M. Beard, New Basic History of The United States 228 (1968)). Given the extensive Supreme Court precedent affirming the unique mission of public education and holding that the free-speech rights of public-school students are not coextensive with those of adults, we believe that the exclusion of racially divisive symbols in a school that has experienced intense racial tensions is a permissible content-based restriction. The critical question, therefore, is whether the school has enforced its facially neutral, written dress code banning racially divisive symbols in a viewpoint-discriminatory manner.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“Under Tinker, “to justify prohibition of a particular expression of opinion,” a school district must be able to show only “that its action was caused by something more than a mere desire to avoid the discomfort and unpleasantness that always accompany an unpopular viewpoint,” but rather, “that the school au thorities had reason to anticipate that the wearing of [the banned imagery] would substantially interfere with the work of the school or would impinge upon the rights of other students,” including the right “to be secure and to be let alone.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.