High court rejects student online cases
The U.S. Supreme Court has passed up a pair of cases for the online age - whether schools may censor students who are at home when they create online attacks against school officials and other students.
The U.S. Supreme Court has passed up a pair of cases for the online age - whether schools may censor students who are at home when they create online attacks against school officials and other students.
The justices on Tuesday rejected appeals from Pennsylvania and West Virginia involving questions about the limits on criticism from students and where the authority of school officials ends.
The high-court decision left standing lower-court rulings that two Pennsylvania students could not be disciplined at school for parodies of their principals that they created on home computers and posted online.
In the West Virginia case, an appeals court upheld the suspension of a student who created a web page that suggested another student had a sexually transmitted disease, and invited classmates to comment.
Lawyers on both sides were disappointed that the high court chose not to step into the fray over student speech posted online, as federal court judges have issued a broad range of opinions on the subject.
"We've missed an opportunity to really clarify for school districts what their responsibility and authority is at a time when kids are using electronic media instantaneously, and especially when those messages are so impactful and immediate on the school setting," said Francisco Negron, general counsel of the National School Boards Association.
With the cases settled, Justin Layshock of Western Pennsylvania will now receive $10,000 in damages plus legal fees, while an eastern Pennsylvania girl, identified in the lawsuit only as "J.S.," can return to court to pursue damages and legal costs.
In 2005, Layshock created a parody that said his principal smoked marijuana and kept beer behind his desk. The Hermitage School District said the parody substantially disrupted school operations. Layshock was suspended, but the suspension was overturned by a district judge, a three-judge appeals panel, and then the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
In the other Pennsylvania case, an eighth-grader in the Blue Mountain School District who had been disciplined for dress-code violations created a fake profile of a principal purportedly from Alabama. She used her principal's photograph and described him as a pedophile and mentioned a sex act. The girl later apologized, took down the page, and was suspended for 10 days.
Both families appealed the suspensions, without condoning the behavior.
"Though disturbing, the record indicates that the profile was so outrageous that no one took its content seriously," a Third Circuit majority wrote of the Blue Mountain parody in June. But the court was divided 8-6.
