For those who can't read the article, here's a summary:
> Brandi Levy sent a profanity-laden post to her friends on Snapchat in 2017, venting her frustrations with cheerleading and her school. When coaches at the Pennsylvania school discovered the post, she was barred from the squad for a year. The case will determine whether schools have the right to punish pupils for what they say off-campus. It is being viewed as a major test of the US Constitution's First Amendment, which protects free speech rights.
As for my own thoughts... I'm hoping the outcome of this case can be used as a litmus test for related bannings/cancellations when people express an opinion "off-campus" (so to speak).
Edit2: Looks like HN can't handle URLs that end with a period. Clicking the link above won't work; you have to manually terminate it with a period before loading (should end with "B.L.", not "B.L")
This is a lot different than being "canceled". The school must abide by policies and incorporate student's right to free speech, access to education, and equitable access to related school services and programs (including cheerleading).
Being "canceled" is a choice that private individuals and institutions make to not associate themselves with speech, actions, or views they find either objectionable or simply damaging to their brand and business goals. This is entirely a social phenomena and has no legal basis. People legally can and will fire/hire people as it serves my business goals even if you think it is lame. There is no 1st amendment violation here.
Conflating these things is a favorite straw man of people who simply feel scared and angry that they don't always get to be jerks with zero social or career implications (try going around saying you are a satanist and see how that affects your career, this isn't a new thing, just people are whining about it more loudly lately). They are very much not the same.
It's not just that it was expressed off campus. It was expressed privately. Her speech on its own never reached the school. It was deliberately recorded and rebroadcast. The disruptive speech was the replaying of what she said, not her saying it. There is a huge difference.
If everything private is fair game, then I expect we should be able to depose all parties involved for any disparaging statements they have ever made. Then we can proceed with either cancelling the large majority of everyone, and prosecuting the rest for perjury. I suppose there is as third group who just don't say anything at all, and we should just go ahead and nail them for thoughtcrime.
Sure, there is a blurred line with posting something on a forum which is read in school, but this case clearly isn't that. The speech wasn't public and wasn't available at large.
This case will be irrelevant to workplace firings. It's the specific situation of children in schools having fewer rights than adults in the workplace that's the issue here. Some courts have already ruled that kids don't enjoy a full separation between school and personal lives because what they do at home can be disruptive at school, and this ruling is expected to address that specific line of thinking.
And really, any grown adult who says the same things about their employer that Levy did about her school should expect to find themselves unemployed as soon as word gets back. I don't mean that to diss Levy, who was a kid at the time, and besides, what kids don't privately rant to their friends about school? It's neither appropriate nor desirable for a school to say "you don't like it, then quit" to a child, whereas it's reasonable for most work settings to fire a disgruntled employee.
Redirect created, so your link should work now. Given that Hacker News isn't the only platform that does this, I wonder if there's a world in which it makes sense for Wikipedia to redirect "foo" to "foo." by default, assuming a page named "foo." exists and a page named "foo" does not?
The answer should be rather obvious if you put it like this: Should a school get to regulate the speech and expression of its students outside the class room?
This is a public school so they are considered a part of (subsidized by) the government. But if it were a private Christian religious school, and she was promoting Satan worship in her out of school TikTok time, would you think the school should be forced to ignore it and let her keep singing in their televised choir?
Hmmm, I'm not sure that's the meaning of free speech. Forcing a private entity to provide an unpaid service is something quite different.
> Edit2: Looks like HN can't handle URLs that end with a period. Clicking the link above won't work; you have to manually terminate it with a period before loading (should end with "B.L.", not "B.L")
Clearly you haven't dealt with many schools. Only when the stakes are so low can people afford to be so petty.
Some school faculty and administration are incredibly petty and vindictive. Certainly not all but a lot. Grown adults absolutely pick favorites, bully students, talk down to them, and carry out petty beefs for any reason or no reason at all. Sometimes they hurt the children to get back at parents they don't like. Sometimes they (for whatever reason) seek validation from students and will participate in bullying of unpopular students. These can be trivial things, like accepting late work from some students but no others or grading one student's work more harshly. Other times they believe they are doing a student good by "teaching them a lesson" or expressing their disapproval of the student or family's lifestyle.
I have absolutely no problem believing the school administration and coach were offended and rather than discussing it with the 14 year old they decided to prove who was boss by punishing her.
Casual reminder that this school is less than 30 minutes from the one that jailed a girl for a year and a half for making a fake myspace page lightly making fun of the principal. (As seen in the excellent doc: Kids For Cash)
PA has some extreme deep south vibes in some areas that constitute an aggressive hatred and power addiction over younger people.
I don't think schools should get involved in off campus speech or activities. However, we are seeing more and more of it. This case isn't even that extreme compared to others. There are people being suspended from actual school for non-threatening photos with guns or even just liking a photo of a gun.
On the other hand, I don't see the problem with cutting a student from an extracurricular for actions that contradict its intended purpose or standards. If you're saying f the school and f cheerleading and the goal of the cheer squad is to promote school spirit and pride... (she wasn't suspended, given detention, or kicked off the softball team) I know I would have been benched or cut if I talked about throwing a game or not trying my hardest and those statements made it back to the coach. It's not like they were monitoring social media for this.
I'll probably get downvoted, but I guess that's the cost of exercising my free speech.
> I know I would have been benched or cut if I talked about throwing a game or not trying my hardest and those statements
Do you think you'd get a years suspension as a 14 year old if you'd said "fuck this team" to a friend after losing a match? And do you really think that would have been an appropriate response?
You can't compare her venting to threats of throwing games or intentionally under-performing.
I'd be more inclined to agree but the Snap was hardly public - it disappeared long before school resumed - and her parents were heavily involved, appealing this decision to all levels of school admin before launching a suit. A teenager saying "fuck this $whatever" outside of school hours is hardly disruptive enough to justify this level of punishment. And that level of punishment over something so trivial makes it more difficult for other students to exercise their right to speech without government interference.
Sports or Extra Curricular Activities come with additional responsibilities than simply attending school. When you participate in these activities you become a representative of the school. In a simple example this is why most sports teams ( used to ) wear ties and or slacks on game day.
The community and the school views you as an extension of the school's pride and standards. You sign a contract to this affect when you join the activity.
Cheerleading has a unique set of requirements beyond other programs. In some schools the student body votes for the cheer squad, in others the ASB council does. Sometimes they are members of the ASB council. In some schools that are actually considered a sport ( inside joke for other who have been involved in cheer, and yes it is one of if not the toughest sport ).
This makes the contract a Cheerleader signs a bit different than other activities. The contracts do become a bit vague. However, sending out an instagram as the one in this instance would certainly fail the criteria for most cheer contracts.
Activities outside of school typically prohibited by most activity contracts include drinking, attending parties where illegal activities are occurring, being arrested, disparaging your team or opponent, bullying any member of the student body, etc.
My two cents, the severity of the punishment is the problem. I believe the penalty outweighed the violation. A single game suspension and an apology would have been a better teachable response. Instead they created a crisis where one did not exist.
Certainly agreed, for the speech that has nothing to do with any school activities. Your comparison about talking about throwing a game and the coach learning about it is apt; that sort of speech is essentially the same as your boss at work overhearing that you want to sabotage your work. I feel like the coach, or boss, taking action because they don't feel their player or employee has the best interests of the team or company at heart is well-warranted.
However, for speech that does not relate to any school activities (for example, taking your point of a student exercising their Second Amendment right) should not result in action against the student.
Political correctness isn't about taste or decency, it's about control through pseudo-offense, imaginary "victims," and "microaggressions." This is manipulative browbeating by implicitly threatening people's standing in society by telling them what to think, what words are "correct" now, and what topics they can't talk about anymore, even as jokes. Oh and now, let's retroactively rehash the past, tell people how horrible they were in the present, and punish them too. Keep looking for people to punish, excoriate, banish, and crucify until there's no one left. After all, no crime is too small to not earn the instant death penalty.
George Carlin (RIP), Bill Maher, Jerry Seinfeld... sadly, I think they lost the war because there weren't and aren't enough comedians with enormous lower-middle orbs (female orbs run a little higher) to stand up or manspread against the tides of Karens, booers (that's not "boogers," although that would work too), shouters, and the rest of the heckler safety-pin brigade mob.
> I don't think schools should get involved in off campus speech or activities. However, we are seeing more and more of it. This case isn't even that extreme compared to others. There are people being suspended from actual school for non-threatening photos with guns or even just liking a photo of a gun.
It's a symptom of a bigger problem in that U.S.A. schools and companies can terminate for arbitrary reasons.
Such would never hold where I live and most other places where an expulsion from school requires approval from an independent government organization or a court which of course will give the defending party ample opportunity to tell it's own version of events and defend itself.
The U.S.A. seems culturally built upon a mentality that one should fear government, but never citizens, and consequently has developed an idea of “Free speech is only from the government.” whereas in most developed nations, freedom of opinion is a more active right that the government also attempts to safeguard from private citizens and schools.
There is a whitelist of reasons in most developed nations wherefore one may be terminated, not a blacklist wherefore one may not, and “saying controversial things outside of work, not in any way associating oneself with one's empoyer” is usually not one of them.
> If you're saying f the school and f cheerleading and the goal of the cheer squad is to promote school spirit and pride... (she wasn't suspended, given detention, or kicked off the softball team) I know I would have been benched or cut if I talked about throwing a game or not trying my hardest and those statements made it back to the coach. It's not like they were monitoring social media for this.
There is validity in the idea that off campus speech on social media can interfere with on campus activities, but I think the slope is far to slippery to allow the government (yes public schools are the government) to extend to all students and all times because social media posts can disrupt the learning environments. Kids already check their constitutional rights at the door of the school, and they can regulate their own platforms, but there is no way the courts can allow schools unmitigated power to rear children on behalf of the government 24/7 in all mediums of expression.
The bullying argument by the school is rich, because that is exactly what these adults are doing, they are bullying a kid into keeping quiet about the schools behavior.
Sure kids can be bullied on social media off campus but the school doesn’t need to regulate that, the law provides remedies, and if the bullying extends from an off campus social media post to an on campus violation then the school can step in at that time and punish that behavior.
It's one thing for a school to exercise editorial control over a student paper (previous SCOTUS case), but it's quite another for them to try to control student speech outside of school.
A lot of public schools in the US are miserable places with dumb and often hostile adults. I agree that they are the ones bullying the student here - I hope the school loses.
> The coaches said Levy’s snap violated the team rules she had agreed to, including showing respect, avoiding “foul language and inappropriate gestures,” and a strict policy against “any negative information regarding cheerleading, cheerleaders, or coaches placed on the Internet.”
On the other hand:
> Some cheerleaders complained about Levy’s message, and the coaches decided to suspend her from the squad for a year.
This entire thing could've been avoided with a reasonable response. Like a reminder about the team rules. Maybe a one week suspension. A full year suspension is insane.
That said, she obviously had no choice but to agree to the rules, so that's no defense against a First Amendment violation.
I stopped reading the article when I realized the student was 14 at the time of the post.
Anything posted by someone at that age, especially on a temporary medium such as snapchat, should have an implicit "for entertainment purposes only" label on it along with a EULA that says that unless it might cause immediate danger to someone else that it should be treated as satire.
As someone who grew up before the Internet perhaps I have a less than optimal view of the issue. I think that in the case of non-threatening speech, the school has no business disciplining students for off campus speech.
What if it's not phrased as discipline? What if they said "This speech is an example of your character and we'd rather not have you on our squad." The assumption is (as someone pointed out up thread) that there's no right to be on the squad; that you can (as the joke goes) be fired or not hired at anytime for no reason but not any reason.
Anyone else find it ridiculously coy that the Washington Post censors the word "fuck" in the quote that is the crux of the case. I'm sure the readers are all adults who can handle them accurately reporting the quote. Kids aren't reading the Washington Post Courts & Law section.
> I know a man who is rock hard – he's firm in his pants, he's firm in his shirt, his character is firm – but most of all, his belief in you the students of Bethel, is firm. Jeff Kuhlman is a man who takes his point and pounds it in. If necessary, he'll take an issue and nail it to the wall. He doesn't attack things in spurts – he drives hard, pushing and pushing until finally – he succeeds. Jeff is a man who will go to the very end – even the climax, for each and every one of you. So please vote for Jeff Kuhlman, as he'll never come between us and the best our school can be.
That's the student body election speech that was ruled not to be protected in _Fraser_, one of the main precedents in this case.
If I was in charge(and I should be, you should all appoint me dictator and get it over with already) we'd have a common sense solution to this problem. It's obvious what to do.
There are two kinds of speech- expressive speech and active speech. Expressive speech can be a rant, a dialogue, swearing, etc. You can call people the N word. That's all expressive. it is you expressing your opinions and your views. You have an absolute right to that and nobody should be able to challenge you on this.
Active speech is speech that seeks to push an action agenda or is supporting actions. When you talk about what you are doing -and- what you are doing is offensive, then your speech is an extension of your offensive actions and does not stand on it's own. As a result, it may not be protected, depending on if your actions are offensive, harmful, or even if someone just doesn't like them.
For example, if an employee says "i hate working here" and you terminate them for that, then you have violated their free speech.
if instead they say "bathroom strike #notworking to protest horrible job" and you terminate them for saying that, then you have not violated their free speech, you have acted upon the information presented in their words to respond to their actions or planned actions.
Maybe it's just me, maybe it's just a snapchat "feature", but one of the first things that struck me was the idea that this young woman sent the rant out to something like 250 people, of which a nonneglible portion was from her school (and had additional ties to the cheer group).
Comparing this to my own experiences - I know I said plenty of things in high school which would have landed me in hot waters had they reached the wrong ears. But they didn't, and while there was certainly some luck involved, there was also discretion at play. I kept my personal opinions personal and limited to other individuals or groups that I could trust.
So I guess my question is - does discretion play a role? Is there a difference if I whisper to a friend that I'd love to kick somebody's ass or if I post the same idea to a public social media space where it can be seen by a larger audience? What if I yell it out real loud during a break? What then?
It will be fascinating to see how this case plays out, as I can see valid arguments on both sides of the table. Free speech is key, but if we want schools to have any chance of succeeding there must be a way to protect students who are being unfairly targeted.
>...the Court held, 5–4, that the First Amendment does not prevent educators from suppressing student speech that is reasonably viewed as promoting illegal drug use at or across the street from a school-supervised event.
I'm trying to figure out a litmus test on how the content of what is said could make this justified or not.
Like if a football player got on snapchat and said that they hope they lose the game this coming Friday and that they intended to take actions that undermined the team, would they be justified in being kicked off the team? I think so.
Is there a similar line for cheerleading and did this cross it? I don't think so, but it's hard to say for sure. I don't know if it's possible to make a ruling that simultaneously defends the cheerleader's speech without also preventing the football coach from acting in this hypothetical situation.
The Roberts court loves free speech even in far more harmful forms - see Citizens United. They will be very wary of implications of "liberal" companies governing speech outside of work too.
This was a huge over reach by the school and now they're gonna lose big time.
What was her initial conflict with cheerleading team?
I think an unsubstantiated temper tantrum is a perfectly reasonable cause to suspend her from the team. The real cause for concern is their blanket policy against any form of criticism whether warranted or not:
> The coaches said Levy’s snap violated the team rules she had agreed to, including showing respect, avoiding “foul language and inappropriate gestures,” and a strict policy against “any negative information regarding cheerleading, cheerleaders, or coaches placed on the Internet.”
It seems like they're justifying the suspension by saying something far more incriminating. What exactly are they trying to hide? A culture of undue pressure, bullying, maybe groping? Cheerleading has after all turned into quite a sexually suggestive form of entertainment.
It has always seemed ridiculous to me that schools should have any role whatsoever in the off-campus activities of their students (assuming that the behavior didn't occur on or with school property[such as a school website], while the student was under the supervision of school employees[such as a field trip] or had any involved with any school resources). Aside from being unconstitutional, our schools are struggling to perform their basic core role - education. They should be spending all their resources on figuring out how to educate students at school instead of trying to police their out-of-school behavior. That's what parents are for.
It’s a bit disingenuous of the ACLU to claim that schools should stamp out cyber bullying and in the same breath claim that schools should have no influence on off campus activity. Guess what? The cyber bullying occurs off campus. And now, thanks to the ACLUs efforts, the bullying will be protected speech.
At least have a little honesty. The ACLU should be up front with their biases that they’re a civil liberties first organisation. They only care about those liberties, regardless of its effect on other matters. Don’t sit there claiming “yes we also care about cyber bullying” because your current work guts the only mechanism for curbing it.
[+] [-] umvi|4 years ago|reply
> Brandi Levy sent a profanity-laden post to her friends on Snapchat in 2017, venting her frustrations with cheerleading and her school. When coaches at the Pennsylvania school discovered the post, she was barred from the squad for a year. The case will determine whether schools have the right to punish pupils for what they say off-campus. It is being viewed as a major test of the US Constitution's First Amendment, which protects free speech rights.
As for my own thoughts... I'm hoping the outcome of this case can be used as a litmus test for related bannings/cancellations when people express an opinion "off-campus" (so to speak).
Edit: More info about the case here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahanoy_Area_School_District_v....
Edit2: Looks like HN can't handle URLs that end with a period. Clicking the link above won't work; you have to manually terminate it with a period before loading (should end with "B.L.", not "B.L")
[+] [-] eagsalazar2|4 years ago|reply
Being "canceled" is a choice that private individuals and institutions make to not associate themselves with speech, actions, or views they find either objectionable or simply damaging to their brand and business goals. This is entirely a social phenomena and has no legal basis. People legally can and will fire/hire people as it serves my business goals even if you think it is lame. There is no 1st amendment violation here.
Conflating these things is a favorite straw man of people who simply feel scared and angry that they don't always get to be jerks with zero social or career implications (try going around saying you are a satanist and see how that affects your career, this isn't a new thing, just people are whining about it more loudly lately). They are very much not the same.
[+] [-] LanceH|4 years ago|reply
If everything private is fair game, then I expect we should be able to depose all parties involved for any disparaging statements they have ever made. Then we can proceed with either cancelling the large majority of everyone, and prosecuting the rest for perjury. I suppose there is as third group who just don't say anything at all, and we should just go ahead and nail them for thoughtcrime.
Sure, there is a blurred line with posting something on a forum which is read in school, but this case clearly isn't that. The speech wasn't public and wasn't available at large.
[+] [-] kstrauser|4 years ago|reply
And really, any grown adult who says the same things about their employer that Levy did about her school should expect to find themselves unemployed as soon as word gets back. I don't mean that to diss Levy, who was a kid at the time, and besides, what kids don't privately rant to their friends about school? It's neither appropriate nor desirable for a school to say "you don't like it, then quit" to a child, whereas it's reasonable for most work settings to fire a disgruntled employee.
[+] [-] javawizard|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] formerly_proven|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] froh|4 years ago|reply
url encoding the dot with %2E does work around it.
[+] [-] kurthr|4 years ago|reply
Hmmm, I'm not sure that's the meaning of free speech. Forcing a private entity to provide an unpaid service is something quite different.
[+] [-] thaumasiotes|4 years ago|reply
Did you try https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahanoy_Area_School_District_v... ?
[+] [-] 1vuio0pswjnm7|4 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/?oldid=1019908655
[+] [-] zmix|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dmitrygr|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bitexploder|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] optimalsolver|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ecf|4 years ago|reply
Additionally, I hope this can also apply to the workplace.
[+] [-] chmod775|4 years ago|reply
At that age I could've exclaimed something along those lines to my teacher's face and they'd just have laughed at me and asked me to calm down.
If I pulled that at work I'd be asked whether everything is alright.
Apparently nowadays the appropriate response to a child throwing a tantrum or having a mental breakdown is to have one as well.
[+] [-] xenadu02|4 years ago|reply
Some school faculty and administration are incredibly petty and vindictive. Certainly not all but a lot. Grown adults absolutely pick favorites, bully students, talk down to them, and carry out petty beefs for any reason or no reason at all. Sometimes they hurt the children to get back at parents they don't like. Sometimes they (for whatever reason) seek validation from students and will participate in bullying of unpopular students. These can be trivial things, like accepting late work from some students but no others or grading one student's work more harshly. Other times they believe they are doing a student good by "teaching them a lesson" or expressing their disapproval of the student or family's lifestyle.
I have absolutely no problem believing the school administration and coach were offended and rather than discussing it with the 14 year old they decided to prove who was boss by punishing her.
[+] [-] agloe_dreams|4 years ago|reply
PA has some extreme deep south vibes in some areas that constitute an aggressive hatred and power addiction over younger people.
[+] [-] kube-system|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Igelau|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] giantg2|4 years ago|reply
On the other hand, I don't see the problem with cutting a student from an extracurricular for actions that contradict its intended purpose or standards. If you're saying f the school and f cheerleading and the goal of the cheer squad is to promote school spirit and pride... (she wasn't suspended, given detention, or kicked off the softball team) I know I would have been benched or cut if I talked about throwing a game or not trying my hardest and those statements made it back to the coach. It's not like they were monitoring social media for this.
I'll probably get downvoted, but I guess that's the cost of exercising my free speech.
[+] [-] jVinc|4 years ago|reply
Do you think you'd get a years suspension as a 14 year old if you'd said "fuck this team" to a friend after losing a match? And do you really think that would have been an appropriate response?
You can't compare her venting to threats of throwing games or intentionally under-performing.
[+] [-] hluska|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kokanator|4 years ago|reply
The community and the school views you as an extension of the school's pride and standards. You sign a contract to this affect when you join the activity.
Cheerleading has a unique set of requirements beyond other programs. In some schools the student body votes for the cheer squad, in others the ASB council does. Sometimes they are members of the ASB council. In some schools that are actually considered a sport ( inside joke for other who have been involved in cheer, and yes it is one of if not the toughest sport ).
This makes the contract a Cheerleader signs a bit different than other activities. The contracts do become a bit vague. However, sending out an instagram as the one in this instance would certainly fail the criteria for most cheer contracts.
Activities outside of school typically prohibited by most activity contracts include drinking, attending parties where illegal activities are occurring, being arrested, disparaging your team or opponent, bullying any member of the student body, etc.
My two cents, the severity of the punishment is the problem. I believe the penalty outweighed the violation. A single game suspension and an apology would have been a better teachable response. Instead they created a crisis where one did not exist.
[+] [-] Zee2|4 years ago|reply
However, for speech that does not relate to any school activities (for example, taking your point of a student exercising their Second Amendment right) should not result in action against the student.
[+] [-] dane-pgp|4 years ago|reply
"Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion."
[+] [-] carpedimebagjoe|4 years ago|reply
George Carlin (RIP), Bill Maher, Jerry Seinfeld... sadly, I think they lost the war because there weren't and aren't enough comedians with enormous lower-middle orbs (female orbs run a little higher) to stand up or manspread against the tides of Karens, booers (that's not "boogers," although that would work too), shouters, and the rest of the heckler safety-pin brigade mob.
[+] [-] mannerheim|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Blikkentrekker|4 years ago|reply
It's a symptom of a bigger problem in that U.S.A. schools and companies can terminate for arbitrary reasons.
Such would never hold where I live and most other places where an expulsion from school requires approval from an independent government organization or a court which of course will give the defending party ample opportunity to tell it's own version of events and defend itself.
The U.S.A. seems culturally built upon a mentality that one should fear government, but never citizens, and consequently has developed an idea of “Free speech is only from the government.” whereas in most developed nations, freedom of opinion is a more active right that the government also attempts to safeguard from private citizens and schools.
There is a whitelist of reasons in most developed nations wherefore one may be terminated, not a blacklist wherefore one may not, and “saying controversial things outside of work, not in any way associating oneself with one's empoyer” is usually not one of them.
> If you're saying f the school and f cheerleading and the goal of the cheer squad is to promote school spirit and pride... (she wasn't suspended, given detention, or kicked off the softball team) I know I would have been benched or cut if I talked about throwing a game or not trying my hardest and those statements made it back to the coach. It's not like they were monitoring social media for this.
Luckily I can't be let go for this either.
[+] [-] standardUser|4 years ago|reply
You may get downvoted for making a preposterous claim with no supporting evidence.
[+] [-] throwaway_kufu|4 years ago|reply
The bullying argument by the school is rich, because that is exactly what these adults are doing, they are bullying a kid into keeping quiet about the schools behavior.
Sure kids can be bullied on social media off campus but the school doesn’t need to regulate that, the law provides remedies, and if the bullying extends from an off campus social media post to an on campus violation then the school can step in at that time and punish that behavior.
[+] [-] gonehome|4 years ago|reply
A lot of public schools in the US are miserable places with dumb and often hostile adults. I agree that they are the ones bullying the student here - I hope the school loses.
[+] [-] js2|4 years ago|reply
> The coaches said Levy’s snap violated the team rules she had agreed to, including showing respect, avoiding “foul language and inappropriate gestures,” and a strict policy against “any negative information regarding cheerleading, cheerleaders, or coaches placed on the Internet.”
On the other hand:
> Some cheerleaders complained about Levy’s message, and the coaches decided to suspend her from the squad for a year.
This entire thing could've been avoided with a reasonable response. Like a reminder about the team rules. Maybe a one week suspension. A full year suspension is insane.
That said, she obviously had no choice but to agree to the rules, so that's no defense against a First Amendment violation.
[+] [-] 908B64B197|4 years ago|reply
Anything posted by someone at that age, especially on a temporary medium such as snapchat, should have an implicit "for entertainment purposes only" label on it along with a EULA that says that unless it might cause immediate danger to someone else that it should be treated as satire.
[+] [-] underseacables|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rattlesnakedave|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hackeraccount|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ascorbic|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] morsch|4 years ago|reply
Wait, that's it?!
[+] [-] Y_Y|4 years ago|reply
That's the student body election speech that was ruled not to be protected in _Fraser_, one of the main precedents in this case.
[+] [-] neonate|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ohgreatwtf|4 years ago|reply
There are two kinds of speech- expressive speech and active speech. Expressive speech can be a rant, a dialogue, swearing, etc. You can call people the N word. That's all expressive. it is you expressing your opinions and your views. You have an absolute right to that and nobody should be able to challenge you on this.
Active speech is speech that seeks to push an action agenda or is supporting actions. When you talk about what you are doing -and- what you are doing is offensive, then your speech is an extension of your offensive actions and does not stand on it's own. As a result, it may not be protected, depending on if your actions are offensive, harmful, or even if someone just doesn't like them.
For example, if an employee says "i hate working here" and you terminate them for that, then you have violated their free speech. if instead they say "bathroom strike #notworking to protest horrible job" and you terminate them for saying that, then you have not violated their free speech, you have acted upon the information presented in their words to respond to their actions or planned actions.
Simple as
[+] [-] ihunter2839|4 years ago|reply
Comparing this to my own experiences - I know I said plenty of things in high school which would have landed me in hot waters had they reached the wrong ears. But they didn't, and while there was certainly some luck involved, there was also discretion at play. I kept my personal opinions personal and limited to other individuals or groups that I could trust.
So I guess my question is - does discretion play a role? Is there a difference if I whisper to a friend that I'd love to kick somebody's ass or if I post the same idea to a public social media space where it can be seen by a larger audience? What if I yell it out real loud during a break? What then?
It will be fascinating to see how this case plays out, as I can see valid arguments on both sides of the table. Free speech is key, but if we want schools to have any chance of succeeding there must be a way to protect students who are being unfairly targeted.
[+] [-] klondike_|4 years ago|reply
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morse_v._Frederick
>...the Court held, 5–4, that the First Amendment does not prevent educators from suppressing student speech that is reasonably viewed as promoting illegal drug use at or across the street from a school-supervised event.
[+] [-] chizhik-pyzhik|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tengbretson|4 years ago|reply
Like if a football player got on snapchat and said that they hope they lose the game this coming Friday and that they intended to take actions that undermined the team, would they be justified in being kicked off the team? I think so.
Is there a similar line for cheerleading and did this cross it? I don't think so, but it's hard to say for sure. I don't know if it's possible to make a ruling that simultaneously defends the cheerleader's speech without also preventing the football coach from acting in this hypothetical situation.
[+] [-] dannykwells|4 years ago|reply
The Roberts court loves free speech even in far more harmful forms - see Citizens United. They will be very wary of implications of "liberal" companies governing speech outside of work too.
This was a huge over reach by the school and now they're gonna lose big time.
[+] [-] Tabular-Iceberg|4 years ago|reply
I think an unsubstantiated temper tantrum is a perfectly reasonable cause to suspend her from the team. The real cause for concern is their blanket policy against any form of criticism whether warranted or not:
> The coaches said Levy’s snap violated the team rules she had agreed to, including showing respect, avoiding “foul language and inappropriate gestures,” and a strict policy against “any negative information regarding cheerleading, cheerleaders, or coaches placed on the Internet.”
It seems like they're justifying the suspension by saying something far more incriminating. What exactly are they trying to hide? A culture of undue pressure, bullying, maybe groping? Cheerleading has after all turned into quite a sexually suggestive form of entertainment.
[+] [-] StanislavPetrov|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nindalf|4 years ago|reply
At least have a little honesty. The ACLU should be up front with their biases that they’re a civil liberties first organisation. They only care about those liberties, regardless of its effect on other matters. Don’t sit there claiming “yes we also care about cyber bullying” because your current work guts the only mechanism for curbing it.