A Pennsylvania school district decided to help teach good citizenship by
requiring 60 hours of unpaid community service in order to graduate from
high school. Two students took the district to court, charging that the requirement
violated the First Amendment by requiring them to go against their
personal belief that community service should be voluntary and the Thirteenth Amendment because
they were being forced to labor for no compensation which they called
slavery. The Federal District Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled against the
students. The court ruled that participating in community service was not
expressing a belief in its value and therefore the students' First Amendment rights were not
being violated and 2)that not all labor performed to avoid legal sanctions
can be considered involuntary servitude mentioned in the Thirteenth Amendment, that
that Amendment was never intended to prevent states from compelling the
performance of civic duties, therefore the community service requirement was not a
violation of the Thirteenth Amendment.