Too Young to Vote, Not Too Young to Have a Voice: The Legal Power of Youth 

For millions of Americans under the age of 18, the conventional definition of political power, casting a ballot, remains out of reach. The limitation leads to a general misunderstanding: youth are legal bystanders in the democratic process until they become adults.

This assumption is wrong in a legal sense. The U.S. Constitution imposes no age limit on fundamental civil rights and privileges. Electoral suffrage is age-based, but the means by which citizens participate in shaping public policy—speech, peaceful assembly, and petitioning the government—are distributed equally among young citizens. Voting behavior is not the only form of civic involvement that begins at age 18. Young people have tremendous influence over public policy, and they can use the tools of law to help shape it before they even enter the voting booth. 

The First Amendment is the foundation of non-electoral political participation. It safeguards against interference by the government in the right to freedom of speech, peaceful assembly, and petition; the Supreme Court has ruled that minors are entitled to these protections as well. Young advocates employ them as a means of articulating political views, calling rallies, or lobbying; however, the First Amendment restricts only government action—public officials, public schools, police. It does not impose rules on private entities, which lawfully may impose internal rules that a public body could not. The Supreme Court drew that line sharply in Rendell-Baker v. Kohn (1982), holding that a private school was not a state actor even though nearly all of its funding came from public sources and it served students referred by public districts. The Court stated that public funding and excessive regulation of a private institution do not make it an arm of the government. 

That does not mean that students who attend private schools are left without a remedy. In most states, courts view the relationship between the private school and its family as contractual, the terms of which are provided by the contract of enrollment, a student handbook, and the code of conduct. When those documents promise students the right to express their views, publish a student newspaper, or receive a hearing before discipline, courts can enforce those promises as binding commitments—though they generally ask only whether the school substantially followed its own stated procedures in good faith, not whether the speech would have survived Tinker. A handful of states take it one step further by law. California’s Leonard Law prohibits private colleges from punishing speech that would be protected off campus, and a companion provision extends the same rule to private secondary schools, exempting religiously controlled ones. In Corry v. Stanford University (1995), the California trial court applied that law to invalidate Stanford’s speech code—a reminder that the enforceable protection came from a state law, not from the Constitution. There is no similar law in New Jersey, and if a student in a private school here has a handbook, it is the content of that handbook which generally governs.

These rights are legally transformed when they are on public school grounds. Public schools are government-sponsored, and as such, administrators are required to abide by the Constitution while at the same time keeping the environment orderly. In Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (1969), the Supreme Court ruled that students were not stripped of their First Amendment rights at the schoolhouse gate. Schools are not permitted to censor expression unless they can establish that it makes a material and substantial change in the school day. 

Subsequent cases imposed limits: schools may prohibit vulgar campus language (Bethel School District No. 403 v. Fraser, 1986) and schools may censor school-sponsored publications for pedagogical purposes (Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier, 1988). However, there are some states that offer better statutory safeguards for students. For instance, the New Jersey New Voices Act provides a wide range of protection from administrative officials' prior restraint and censorship for student journalists in public schools. Generally, schools can not punish off-campus speech unless it is sufficiently severe cyberbullying or directed threats (Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L., 2021). 

Youth use practical mechanisms in local governance outside school. Petitions are a symbol with great significance under the First Amendment. Minors are not eligible to vote on formal direct-democracy ballot initiatives, but they often serve as primary campaign circulators, collecting signatures for them. In addition, state statutes such as the New Jersey Open Public Meetings Act mandate public meetings for city councils and school boards and require that meeting notices be posted online to ensure accessibility. These are legally protected comment periods within the local area. Since they are considered limited public forums, officials are prohibited from discriminating against students based on their political opinions. 

Youth activism can have a meaningful impact on policy. Following the 2018 shooting at Florida Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, March for Our Lives student organizers rallied in mass assembly and direct lobbying to bring both the Florida Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act and the federal Bipartisan Safer Communities Act to the floor. Likewise, local municipal meeting halls were packed with youth-led Sunrise Movement groups, aiming to get big cities to adopt clean energy ordinances. Political power is a perpetually growing ecosystem. Today, minors wield real legal and political power based on their First Amendment rights. This illustrates that the non-electoral process, on the practical side, is one of the crucial ways in which young people can be engaged in the country.

Written By: Steven Peralta