In February, members of the East Tennessee State University (ETSU) basketball team locked arms and took a knee in what Coach Jason Shay called a symbolic protest against “racial inequalities
Monday, May 10, 2021
The Supreme Court of the United States will hear argument in
Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L. and whatever the result, the decision will fundamentally change how a public school can discipline students for speech that occurs outside the school.
Traditionally, public school officials were allowed to punish students for exercising their First Amendment rights on school grounds when the speech ‘would materially and substantially interfere with the requirements of appropriate discipline and in the operation of the school.’ This rule, first articulated in
The facts of
Mahanoy involve a high school freshman and junior varsity cheerleader, B.L., who went on to Snapchat to voice her frustration about not making the varsity cheerleading team. After posting a picture of her and friend, with middle fingers raised and a caption ‘‘F school, f softball, f cheer, f everything,’ she was suspended from the cheerleading team. Importan
as Ben Herbert, discusses what happened when he wore a BLM shirt to school in Oklahoma.
Two Oklahoma elementary school students were pulled out of their classrooms last week and forced to spend the remainder of the day in an administrative office after they came to school wearing “Black Lives Matter” T-shirts, the
New York Timesreported on Sunday.
Bentlee Herbert, 8, and
Rodney Herbert, 5, who are brothers, were removed from separate classes in the Ardmore school district because the superintendent said that political attire would “not be allowed at school,” the children’s mother,
Jordan Herbert, told the
Times. Ardmore, Okla., is midway between Oklahoma City and Dallas, Tex.
Teenagers Being Disciplined By School For Incidents Off Campus
Attorney Frederick Penney dives into the Brandi Levy case
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SACRAMENTO, Calif., May 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ Managing partner of Penney and Associates Lawyers weighs in on the controversy over whether a school can discipline a child for activities that have occurred off campus? https://www.penneylawyers.com/ .
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
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This controversy revolves around the 2017 case of then 14-year-old Brandi Levy and the Mahanoy Area School District in Pennsylvania. Brandi was a junior varsity cheerleader at Mahanoy Area High School in Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania. After one year of cheer Brandi was hoping that she would be moved up from junior varsity to varsity cheerleader. However, she was not moved up to the varsity cheer squad and she like many kids was quite disappointed. On