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Imagine that a public high school student posts an editorial cartoon criticizing efforts to expand the Supreme Court on his Facebook page. The next day, when the student arrives at school, administrators pull him aside. They tell the student that because of his post, his classmates are debating court-packing when they should be studying algebra. The administrators give the student an ultimatum: Delete the Facebook post or face school discipline.
This might seem like a blatant invasion of the student’s First Amendment right to speak out on matters of public concern. Yet, it could be allowed if the Supreme Court rules for a Pennsylvania school district in a case argued this Wednesday called
A cheerleader s salty language gives the Supreme Court a chance to bolster the First Amendment | Print-features
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Don t Let Public Schools Control Students Private Speech
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Don t let public schools control students private speech
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Syndicated Columnist
WASHINGTON The case of the cheerleader’s salty language comes to the Supreme Court today, at a moment when technological and social changes should cause the court to expand First Amendment protections of student speech. Social media necessitate rethinking the proper scope of government’s jurisdiction, through public schools, in controlling students. And the fact that freedom of speech is besieged in academic settings justifies judicial supervision of schools’ attempts to extend their controls.
When B.L., a Pennsylvania ninth-grader, failed to make the varsity cheerleading team, she posted on Snapchat a picture of her raised middle finger and this caption: “F school f softball f cheer f everything.” Another student brought this episode of adolescent volatility to the attention of the school’s coaches, who suspended B.L. from the junior varsity cheerleading team because she had damaged the school’s image by violating the requirement to “have