Tonkon Torp hosted the ACLU of Oregon for a stop on a speaking tour featuring Mary Beth Tinker discussing the 1969 landmark ACLU Supreme Court case Tinker v. Des Moines. Steven Wilker organized the event along with Alex Tinker, a 2013 summer associate at Tonkon Torp. Mary Beth Tinker is the aunt of both Alex Tinker and Josh Graham. Mary Beth was a 13-year-old student in December 1965 when she and a group of students decided to wear black armbands to school to protest the war in Vietnam. The school board passed a preemptive ban. Represented by the ACLU, the students and their families embarked on a four-year court battle that culminated in the landmark Supreme Court decision: Tinker v. Des Moines. The Court ruled 7-2 that students and teachers do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”
