Facebook Freedom of Speech
Can schools discipline students for Internet speech posted offsite? Federal appellate judges wrestling reached different rulings this week in two Pennsylvania cases which posed this question.
One 3rd U.S. Circuit Court panel upheld the suspension of a Schuylkill County eighth-grader who posted sexually explicit material along with her principal's photograph on a fake MySpace page. That opinion is J.S. v. Blue Mountain School District. In dissent, one of the judges said his colleagues were broadening the school's authority and improperly censoring students.
However, a different three-judge panel said in Layshock v. Hermitage School District that school officials in Mercer County cannot reach into a family's home and police the Internet. That case also involves a MySpace parody of a principal created by a student at home.
School boards and free-speech advocates found lttle guidane after awaiting the rulings for clarity on how far schools can go to control both online speech and offsite behavior.
Similar cases have surfaced across the country, with different rulings, but none have reached the Supreme Court. Judges are therefore left to rely on decades-old Supreme Court case law on the limits of school discipline for guidance.
In the Blue Mountain case, both the district and circuit courts upheld the 14-year-old student's 10-day suspension. The appellate opinion concluded that her lewd, sexually graphic posting was likely to cause a disruption at school, and could therefore be restricted under prior case law.
The Web page, which used a fake name but an actual photo of the principal, was purported to have been posted by an Alabama principal who described himself as a pedophile and sex addict. The Internet address included the phrase "kids rock my bed." The principal and other students at Blue Mountain quickly became aware of it, discussing it at school the next day, according to testimony.
In the Mercer County case, the U.S. District Judge had ruled that Hermitage School District officials failed to show then-senior Justin Layshock's parody MySpace profile of his Hickory High School principal substantially disrupted school operations.