K–12 students have a First Amendment right to protest peacefully in school — wearing armbands, writing for the school paper, etc. — but students have no right to disrupt classrooms with strikes and walkouts.

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Students are legally obligated to attend school, and parents rightly expect that their children will not be pressured into taking political positions, much less illegal actions, by administrators, teachers, or outside groups. Yet for a decade, student walkouts for political protests have been normalized, even encouraged, by teachers’ unions, advocates of “action civics,” university admissions offices, and adult political activists. Now, Democratic politicians are openly trying to egg on student walkouts, while Republicans are saying “no more.”

High school walkouts in protest of President Trump’s 2016 election victory hit more than half of the states. This year’s wave of middle and high school walkouts in protest of ICE reached more than three dozen states. In between, we’ve seen successive waves of K–12 walkouts over issues such as gun control (2018) and Gaza (2024).

In her Democratic Party reply to President Trump’s State of the Union address, Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger lauded “the determination of students organizing school walkouts all across the country,” then took a swipe at Governor Greg Abbott of Texas for trying to keep students in school. Here is yet another example of Democratic radicalism — this time coming from a supposed voice of moderation. Nor is Spanberger’s SOTU reply an isolated incident. Democratic legislators in Georgia and Washington State have introduced bills to encourage student walkouts.

Meanwhile, Republican leaders in Florida, Texas, and Oklahoma have moved to block walkouts, especially when abetted by teachers and administrators. The exception is Idaho, where a disappointing tie vote in committee blocked a bill that would have discouraged student walkouts.

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As walkouts spread and divide the parties, the issue is drawing ever more attention at the local, state, and national levels. This higher profile for the walkout issue is helpful, not only because it lays bare Democratic radicalism, but because it increases the likelihood that red states, at least, will prepare for the next wave. Unless states pass laws that discourage student walkouts, they’ll continue to be caught unawares when the next disruption comes. So, let’s take a closer look at what’s been happening in the states. There we’ll find not only potential solutions, but evidence that the besetting sins of student walkouts cannot be reformed away or eliminated by better supervision. Walkouts themselves must end.

Democrat Osman Salahuddin, assistant majority whip of Washington State’s House of Representatives, filed a bill this year that would give students at least two days off per year to protest or lobby. The bill was likely filed too late to pass this year, but it gives you a sense of what’s out there.

More revealing are a pair of bills filed in Georgia, one in the house providing at least two excused absences per year for student strikes or protests, and one in the senate providing at least one excused........

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