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This is the first case addressing the freedom of speech of students or minors that the Supreme Court has heard in 50 years.
The last was the landmark case of Tinker v. Des Moines in 1969, when students wore armbands to protest the Vietnam War and their school suspended them.
The Supreme Court sided with the students, declaring students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”
Brandi Levy, of Mahanoy City, Schuylkill County told the world via Snapchat that she was mad she did not make the school’s junior varsity cheerleading squad by posting, “F——— school f——— softball f——— cheer f——— everything,” in a post that over a photo of her and a friend giving the middle fingers.
The team’s coaches found out and suspended Levy from the cheerleading team for a year.
Now 18 and finishing her freshman year in college Levy told the Associated Press, “I was a 14-year-old kid. I was upset, I was angry. Everyone, every 14-year-old kid speaks like that at one point.”
Her parents learned of the Snapchat post only when she suspended, she said. “My parents were more concerned on how I was feeling,” Levy said, adding she wasn’t grounded or otherwise punished for what she did.
Her parents filed a federal lawsuit, claiming the suspension violated their daughter’s constitutional speech rights--lower courts agreed--restoring her to the cheerleading team.
“Tinker does not apply to off-campus speech,” The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia stated. “The First Amendment implications of off-campus student speech that threatens violence or harasses others,” was left for another day according to court records.
Many groups felt the court was overreaching, “The First Amendment does not categorically prohibit public schools from disciplining students for speech that occurs off campus,” acting Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote on behalf of the Biden Administration.
The Mahanoy Area School District has declined to comment on the case, except to say “this case is about how schools address the bad days,” in a brief released by the school’s attorney. Schools should not be forced “to ignore speech that disrupts the school environment or invades other students’ rights just because students launched that speech from five feet outside the schoolhouse gate,” Blatt wrote.
The school method of monitoring students would place educators in a position of policing students 24/7, according to Witold “Vic” Walczak of the American Civil Liberties Union, who is representing Levy.
“And that is super dangerous. Not only would students like Brandi not be able to express non-threatening, non-harassing bursts of frustration, but it would give schools the possibility of regulating important political and religious speech,” Walczak said.
Both conservative and liberal groups are supporting Levy in the case as well as Mary Beth and John Tinker, the siblings at the heart of the 1969 case.
Their protest, updated for the digital age, would have included a social media component, perhaps a black armband digitally imposed on their school’s logo, the pair wrote in a high-court brief according to AP.
The outcome proposed by the school district would have left them subject to discipline, the Tinkers wrote.
“The speech here is not the most important in the world. This isn’t political or religious speech,” said Walczak, the ACLU lawyer.
“I’m just trying to prove a point that young students and adults like me shouldn’t be punished for them expressing their own feelings and letting others know how they feel,” Levy said.
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