Apr. 29—MAHANOY CITY — Larry Levy believes the questions from U.S. Supreme Court justices to the attorney representing Mahanoy Area School District in his daughter Brandi's student free speech case Wednesday morning suggest they're leaning in her favor. "I think at the beginning, the petitioner's (Mahanoy Area) argument was weak," Larry Levy said about the presentation by Lisa S. Blatt on .
WASHINGTON
The Supreme Court struggled Wednesday to decide when a student’s right to free speech should shield her from being disciplined by teachers for online postings that may include vulgar, demeaning or racist comments about her school.
The justices said they were in search of a clear rule but had not settled on one.
Lawyers for a Pennsylvania school district and the Justice Department urged the justices to update the law for the era of social media and rule that a school’s authority to punish students is not limited to what happens on school grounds.
“The location from where the post is sent is more or less irrelevant,” said Malcolm Stewart, a deputy U.S. solicitor general. Because of the internet, “off-campus speech now can affect the operation of the school.”
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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
“If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable,” wrote Justice William Brennan in 1989. Wahever the political differences or kinship you may have with the late Supreme Court justice, on this point many of our fellow Americans would agree.
Yesterday the Supreme Court heard arguments in the case
Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L. The case arose when B.L., a high school sophomore at a Pennsylvania public school, didn’t make the varsity cheerleading team. She took to Snapchat to voice her frustrations and posted a picture of herself and a friend holding up their middle fingers, captioning it with some F‐bombs. When the picture was brought to the attention of her cheer coaches, B.L. was suspended from the junior varsity cheerleading team for the year.
B.L. sued the school district for violating her First Amendment rights, arguing that the school could not punish her for off‐campus speech that did not occur in a school‐sponsored forum or bear any mark of approval or endorsement by the school. Both the district court and the Third Circuit ruled in B.L.’s favor. The school district appealed to the Supreme Court, which granted review.