Stephanie Lovett-Bowman, Thursday, January 19, 2012 | Filed under: First Amendment
The United States Supreme Court declined this week to review a pair of high-profile off-campus Internet student speech cases. Both cases involved students who were disciplined at school for posting fake profiles on the Internet of their school principals. The high court’s decision to decline review is a missed opportunity to clarify school districts’ ability to discipline students whose off-campus, online conduct may affect the school environment.
The two cases, which involved materially similar facts, drew national attention when the Third Circuit Court of Appeals issued decisions in the cases that reached opposite conclusions on the same day. In J.S. v. Blue Mountain School District, a middle school student posted a fake MySpace profile of her principal that contained crude content and vulgar language, resulting in a 10-day suspension. In Layshock v. Hermitage School District, a high school student was also suspended after creating a fake webpage mocking his principal.
After reviewing the cases en banc—with all Third Circuit judges participating—the Court held that the discipline applied by the schools in both cases violated the students’ First Amendment right to free speech.