Supreme Court Sides With 'I (Heart) Boobies!'

Pennsylvania teens win the right to wear breast-cancer bracelets
By Neal Colgrass,  Newser Staff
Posted Mar 10, 2014 3:30 PM CDT
Supreme Court Sides With 'I (Heart) Boobies!'
In this Feb. 20, 2013 file photo, Easton Area School District student Kayla Martinez, 14, displays her bracelets for photographers outside the U.S. Courthouse in Philadelphia.   (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)

The Supreme Court sided today with two Pennsylvania teenagers who like wearing their feelings about breast cancer on their wrists, the AP reports. Kayla Martinez and Brianna Hawk got in trouble in 2010 for wearing "I (heart) Boobies!" bracelets at their schools' Breast Cancer Awareness Day. Easton Area Middle School even banned them from the winter dance and suspended them from class. So Martinez and Hawk, then 12 and 13, challenged the ban and sued the school district with the American Civil Liberties Union at their back. They also kept wearing the bracelets.

Now the Supreme Court has rejected the Pennsylvania school district's appeal, siding with an appeals-court ruling that the bracelets aren't "plainly lewd" or disruptive. "It's important that students have the right to stand up for a cause and try to make a difference," said Hawk, reports the Express-Times. "We just wanted to raise awareness about breast cancer." But the school district wants the right to impose dress codes, and its attorney predicts that the issue will return because the Supreme Court's decision went against precedent: "Unfortunately, it will take more lawsuits, more attorneys’ fees, and more chaos in the classroom before we get the answer," he said. (More US Supreme Court stories.)

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