Case: 12-60264 Document: 00513162565 Page: 16 Date Filed: 08/20/2015 No. 12-60264 when it disciplined a student for an “offensively lewd and indecent” speech delivered at a student assembly. 478 U.S. at 677–78, 685. In Hazelwood, the Court upheld a school’s right to “exercis[e] editorial control over the style and content of student speech” in a school-sponsored newspaper when the student engages in “expressive activities that students, parents, and members of the public might reasonably perceive to bear the imprimatur of the school” and the school officials’ “actions are reasonably related to legitimate pedagogical concerns”. 484 U.S. at 262, 271, 273. And, most recently in Morse, the Court considered whether a school infringed a student’s First Amendment right of free speech when it disciplined him for holding up a banner that stated “BONG HiTS 4 JESUS” at a schoolsponsored event. 551 U.S. at 397–98. The Court, through Justice Alito’s controlling concurrence (joined by Justice Kennedy), held a school may discipline a student for speech which poses a “grave and . . . unique threat to the physical safety of students”, such as “advocating illegal drug use”. Id. at 425. (Justice Alito limited his “join[ing] the opinion of the Court on the understanding that the opinion does not hold that the special characteristics of the public schools necessarily justify any other speech restrictions”. Id. at 423.) For these exceptions, schools are not required to prove the occurrence of an actual disruption or one that reasonably could have been forecast. Similarly, in Ponce v. Socorro Independent School District, our court extended the Morse exception to certain threats of school violence. 508 F.3d 765, 771– 72 (5th Cir. 2007). In response to a diary brought to school containing “terroristic threat[s]” mirroring recent mass school shootings, the school suspended the student. Id. at 767. On appeal, our court upheld the suspension as constitutional, extending Morse’s exception to speech “bearing the stamp of 16

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