"I never could have imagined that one simple snap would turn into a Supreme Court case, but I’m proud that my family and I advocated for the rights of millions of public school students."
Said Brandi Levy (now an 18-year-old college student), quoted in "Supreme Court sides with high school cheerleader in free-speech dispute over profane Snapchat rant" (WaPo).
The decision is 8-1, with only Justice Thomas dissenting, and Justice Breyer writing the opinion about Levy's barbaric yawp: "Fuck school, fuck softball, fuck cheer, fuck everything."
From the WaPo article (by Robert Barnes):
In 1969, the Supreme Court famously held in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District that students and teachers do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.” But it also held that schools have broader authority over students than the state generally does when restricting speech, and that authorities can discipline students for on-campus speech that causes or is likely to cause “material and substantial” disruption of school functions....
In the half-century since, the Supreme Court’s decisions have been few and lean toward school administrators. The justices have upheld school disciplinary action regarding lewd speech by students at school events, a student newspaper that operated at the direction of school officials and a nonsensical sign with a seemingly pro-marijuana message — “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” — held by a student at a school activity.
Breyer said a school’s ability to discipline students does not disappear just because the speech is off-campus. “Serious or severe bullying or harassment targeting particular individuals; threats aimed at teachers or other students; the failure to follow rules concerning lessons, the writing of papers, the use of computers, or participation in other online school activities; and breaches of school security devices, including material maintained within school computers” are all areas where a school’s “regulatory interests remain significant,” Breyer wrote.
But he said courts considering such cases in the future should remember they rarely stand in place of parents regarding off-campus speech; and that monitoring student speech 24 hours a day would give students little room for expression....
Here's the opinion. In the second-to-last paragraph, Breyer, addressing the vulgarity of "fuck," quotes from the Court's most famous "fuck" case, Cohen v. California ("Fuck the Draft"):
We cannot lose sight of the fact that, in what otherwise might seem a trifling and annoying instance of individual distasteful abuse of a privilege, these fundamental societal values are truly implicated.
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4 comments:
Lloyd writes:
Sounds like something Scrooge might say before his conversion. Thomas is funny. 19th c courts gave schools a lot of authority to punish both speech and conduct, both on and off campus, if said speech harmed the purposes of the school. Truancy, for example, may make it hard to get through the required curriculum. Wait, haven't things changed since then? Well yes, only three states made attendance at public schools compulsory when the 14th Amendment took effect. So it was at parents' discretion whether a kid attended or not, and ultimately whether a kid was punished or not. Thomas: the majority could have made an argument like this, but they chose not to.
Kids talking at a mall: if the captain of the football team says in public, fuck football, this is likely to harm the team (?), and certainly is more likely than if it was just some kid talking. The Cheer kid was on the team. Communicating on social media isn't necessarily talking off-campus; it's more like talking everywhere at once, and leaving it to owners of devices to decide whether to listen or not.
I taught Am Con Law years ago, and one of the weirdest opinions I remember was Thomas on whether a high school could require a drug test from a urine sample. It's not all that intrusive, says Thomas. Student goes into washroom with adult. Student goes into cubicle alone. Adult listens for tinkle. What? Is this from another solar system or something?
Tom T. writes:
I have some sympathy for the team-cohesion argument, but I think the school forfeited any goodwill on that point by effectively decreeing that any public criticism means you're off the team. That's not cohesion, that's oppression.
The school handled the matter with amazing stupidity. Imposing such a maximal penalty for a relatively bland criticism ensured that the student had nothing to lose by going to court. Then the school lost at every level, ignoring the increasingly dire warnings from each court that they were headed for disaster. And now this decision ties the hands of every school nationwide.
Amadeus 48 writes:
Tom T said, “And now this decision ties the hands of every school nationwide.” Not the private schools.
As I recall, Althouse had a dispute over her skirt length in high school (those were the days, I remember them well). She must smile her secret smile at these officious petty bullies getting put in their place by the UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT.
This school was reaching beyond the schoolhouse, into the student's life away from school. And it was imposing a consequence on the girl. I never suffered any consequences, aside from the indignity of being sent to the vice principal's office and talked to, and it was only ever about what I did at school.
By the way, I got in trouble not just for miniskirts, but for long bangs. I once had the school nurse lecture me on the topic of long bangs as a health issue. Talk about bad science!
Of course, if I'd had social media when I was a teenager... who knows what I would have done and what they'd have done to me?!
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