The U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in an overwhelming 8 to 1 decision, that the “First Amendment rights of public school students are not to be easily cast aside.” As Justice Breyer wrote in the majority opinion, “It might be tempting to dismiss B.L.’s words as unworthy of the robust First Amendment protections discussed herein.” Then again, “sometimes it is necessary to protect the superfluous in order to preserve the necessary.”
Supreme Court sides with student
On Wednesday, June 23, The United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of a Pennsylvania cheerleader who got suspended from her squad over an instagram post, calling the punishment “too severe.” Liberals are breathing a heavy sigh of relief that they didn’t go a step further and rule that all off-campus speech is protected.
That was what the lower court held. Brandi Levy is now 18 and a student in college. When she was “a frustrated ninth-grader,” she voiced her opinion about Mahanoy Area High School and the school made a federal case out of it, literally.
One Spring Saturday she took a selfie of her and a friend “with upraised middle fingers” captioned “F— school, f— softball, f— cheer, f— everything.” It went out to 250 of her closest friends and was supposed to self destruct in 24 hours.
Her cheer coach found out about it, grabbed a screenshot, and “Levy was suspended from cheerleading for a year.” Because she was a minor when the lawsuit was filed, the Supreme Court uses her initials.
“It might be tempting to dismiss B.L.’s words as unworthy of the robust First Amendment protections discussed herein,” Stephen Breyer writes for the vast majority, “but sometimes it is necessary to protect the superfluous in order to preserve the necessary.”
Clarence Thomas was the only Supreme Court Justice to disagree. “Schools historically could discipline students in circumstances like those presented here,” Thomas noted, “because the majority does not attempt to explain why we should not apply this historical rule and does not attempt to tether its approach to anything stable, I respectfully dissent.”
A win for 50 million
The latest SCOTUS decision is being hailed as a “rare win for student speech.” According to Yale law professor Justin Driver, it “marks the first time in more than five decades — all the way back to the Vietnam era — that a high school student has prevailed in a free-speech case at the Supreme Court.”
He says that “given the range of plausible outcomes, public school students should be dancing in the streets due to this decision.” The lower court crossed a line when they said all off-campus speech was protected.
As noted by the National School Boards Association in a statement, the majority of the Supreme Court “made clear that it is not a question of how or where speech is made — whether on school grounds or online — but its impact or effect.”
The “school district lost on the facts of this particular case,” but it still “represents a win for schools, as well as students, who can still be protected from off-campus student speech that bullies, harasses, threatens, disrupts, or meets other circumstances outlined by the Court.”
Ms. Levy issued a statement when she heard the wonderful news. “Young people need to have the ability to express themselves without worrying about being punished when they get to school,” she asserts.
“I never could have imagined that one simple snap would turn into a Supreme Court case, but I’m proud that my family and I advocated for the rights of millions of public school students.” As explained by Justice Breyer, “The vulgarity in B.L.’s posts encompassed a message, an expression of B.L.’s irritation with, and criticism of, the school and cheerleading communities. The school’s interest in teaching good manners is not sufficient, in this case, to overcome B.L.’s interest in free expression.”
