The case of an Alaska high-school student who was suspended after unfurling a drug-related banner during a school event -- but off school property -- will be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court in mid-March, the Anchorage Daily News reported March 4.

In 2002, Joe Frederick was a senior at a Juneau high school when he displayed a banner with the phrase, "Bong Hits for Jesus" at an Olympic torch parade that was passing by his school. School administrators had released students to attend the parade; Frederick and his friends went across the street from the school to display the sign in what Frederick described as a test of student rights. Frederick said the phrase on the banner -- taken from a snowboard sticker -- was chosen because it was funny, provocative, and ambiguous.

"I wanted to know more precisely the boundaries of my freedom," he said recently. "I feel that if you don't use your rights you lose them."

School officials saw the banner as a challenge to school anti-drug policies, and Principal Deborah Morse crossed the street and tore it down. The incident led to Frederick's suspension from school, which in turn led to a lawsuit in which the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Frederick's favor and held Morse personally liable for violating his civil rights.

The U.S. Supreme Court is now poised to hear an appeal by former Clinton impeachment prosecutor Kenneth Starr, who is representing the school for free. "The banner -- if left undisturbed -- could have told not only the high-school student body but the larger community that drug-use promotion is openly tolerated within the local public high school," said Starr.

Backing Frederick is a diverse coalition that includes the ACLU, drug-policy reform groups, feminists, gay-rights groups, and Christian and constitutional-rights organizations worried about empowering school officials to suppress other types of speech.

Censoring the marijuana reference in Frederick's banner raised some pointed questions in Alaska, since the state has been debating whether to reverse a decades-old state Supreme Court decision to allow possession of small amounts of marijuana for personal use. Some questioned whether school officials would be allowed to prevent students from handing out copies of the court's decision in the name of backing school anti-drug policies.