In Historic Opinion, Third Circuit Protects Public School Students’ Off-Campus Social Media Speech
upstart writes in with an IRC submission for nutherguy:
In Historic Opinion, Third Circuit Protects Public School Students' Off-Campus Social Media Speech:
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit issued an historic opinion in B.L. v. Mahanoy Area School District, upholding the free speech rights of public school students. The court adopted the position EFF urged in our amicus brief that the First Amendment prohibits disciplining public school students for off-campus social media speech.
B.L. was a high school student who had failed to make the varsity cheerleading squad and was placed on junior varsity instead. Out of frustration, she posted-over the weekend and off school grounds-a Snapchat selfie with text that said, among other things, "fuck cheer." One of her Snapchat connections took a screen shot of the "snap" and shared it with the cheerleading coaches, who suspended B.L. from the J.V. squad for one year. She and her parents sought administrative relief to no avail, and eventually sued the school district with the help of the ACLU of Pennsylvania.
In its opinion protecting B.L.'s social media speech under the First Amendment, the Third Circuit issued three key holdings.
- Social Media Post Was "Off-Campus" Speech
- Vulgar Off-Campus Social Media Speech is Not Punishable
- Off-Campus Social Media Speech That "Substantially Disrupts" the On-Campus Environment is Not Punishable
[...] The Third Circuit's opinion is historic because it is the first federal appellate court to affirm that the substantial disruption exception from Tinker does not apply to off-campus speech.
Other circuits have upheld regulating off-campus speech citing Tinker in various contexts and under different specific rules, such as when it is "reasonably foreseeable" that off-campus speech will reach the school environment, or when off-campus speech has a sufficient "nexus" to the school's "pedagogical interests."
The Third Circuit rejected all these approaches. The court argued that its "sister circuits have adopted tests that sweep far too much speech into the realm of schools' authority." The court was critical of these approaches because they "subvert[] the longstanding principle that heightened authority over student speech is the exception rather than the rule."
Because there is a circuit split on this important First Amendment student speech issue, it is possible that the school district will seek certiorari and that the Supreme Court will grant review. Until then, we can celebrate this historic win for public school students' free speech rights.
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