Last week
the Supreme Court rules that a Pennsylvania school district had violated
the First Amendment by punishing a student for a vulgar social media message
sent while she was not on school grounds.
Below is an
article explaining the facts of the case. Do you agree with the Supreme
Court ruling? Should a public school ever be able to regulate off campus
speech? Is there potential harm to society if schools can’t ever regulate
off campus speech? Please explain your thoughts.
FACTS TO
REVIEW:
The decision,
on a vote of 8 to 1, did not establish a categorical ban on regulating student
speech outside of school, citing the need of school systems to be able to deal
with issues like bullying and threats.
Instead, it
set out factors that courts should assess in weighing the right of
administrators to punish speech in nonschool settings, with one important
component being whether parents are better suited to handle the situation.
But it was
the first time in more than 50 years that a high school student won a
free-speech case in the Supreme Court, and the decision emphasized that courts
should be skeptical of efforts to constrain off-campus speech.
Justice
Stephen G. Breyer, writing for the majority, said part of what schools must
teach students is the value of free speech.
“America’s
public schools are the nurseries of democracy,” he wrote. “Our representative
democracy only works if we protect the ‘marketplace of ideas.’”
“Schools
have a strong interest in ensuring that future generations understand the workings
in practice of the well-known aphorism, ‘I disapprove of what you say, but I
will defend to the death your right to say it,’” he wrote.
Justice
Clarence Thomas dissented.
The ruling
came at a time when social media has complicated issues of free speech for
students, giving wide circulation to opinions, comments, gossip and other
utterances that might otherwise attract little notice. In its ruling, the court
appeared to acknowledge that it needed to set some boundaries on the power of
school systems to decide what was appropriate in the current era.
“The opinion
reaffirms that schools’ authority over the lives of students is not boundless,”
said Justin
Driver, a law professor at Yale and the author of “The Schoolhouse Gate:
Public Education, the Supreme Court and the Battle for the American Mind.”