This one comes straight out of Tinker v. Des Moines -- and every individual involved in setting a policy banning the American flag should find themselves held PERSONALLY liable for violating a student's rights by banning the display the American flag on his truck.

A high school student in Northglenn is upset that campus security told him to remove the large American flags flying from his pickup truck because it might make others uncomfortable.

Jeremy Stoppel told 7NEWS he got a ticket at Northglenn High School last Thursday for squealing his tires. He said he deserved that ticket and deserved having his parking lot pass suspended for two weeks.

But he’s upset that campus security then told him he can’t fly his 3 feet by 5 feet flags in the bed of his pickup truck anymore.

“She said I should take my flags down. She said this is a school that focuses on diversity and she doesn’t want anyone to feel uncomfortable,” Stoppel said. “How do you suppose anyone would feel uncomfortable in America with an American flag? That’s where I’m confused.”

He said he started flying his flags around school last week.

“Now that I finally get to drive to school, I have a truck, that’s what I want to do. I want to fly my flags. September 11th is coming up so I wanted to fly them in honor of that,” said Stoppel, who said his cousin is serving in the Navy.

The reality is that schools generally are not permitted to ban speech that makes students uncomfortable. Under Tinker v. Des Moines, there has to be a material disruption of school activities -- and if that school has an American flag flying in front of it or anywhere in it, there is no way to argue that display of the American flag does so. And indeed, this would seem to also strike at the very heart of the notion put forward by Justice Jackson in the famous flag salute case, West Virginia v. Barnette:

If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.

That in this case we have school officials seeking to prevent patriotic expression in the name of celebrating "diversity" makes the need to trot out that principle all the more ironic, given that they were originally intended to defend the right of religious dissenters to refuse to salute the American flag.

Fortunately, this case seems to involve overreaching by a single security officer rather than a matter of school or district policy. But that any member of the staff would think it was within their purview to ban the American flag from campus in the name of "diversity" is itself indicative of a need to train the staff about student rights.

And a note to the Stoppel family -- this sounds like a situation that could and would have been resolved by contacting the school or the district without going to the media about it. Yes, you are right and the security officer was dead wrong -- but your own school administration is backing you, and in all likelihood would have done so had they not been contacted by the media without giving the principal or superintendent the chance to resolve the situation first.