A Cheerleader's Vulgar Message Prompts a First Amendment Showdown [View all]

[IsItJustMe]

Source: The New York Times - Adam Liptak Mon, December 28, 2020, 7:10 AM CST

WASHINGTON — It was a Saturday in the spring of 2017, and a ninth grade student in Pennsylvania was having a bad day. She had just learned that she had failed to make the varsity cheerleading squad and would remain on junior varsity.

The student expressed her frustration on social media, sending a message on Snapchat to about 250 friends. The message included an image of the student and a friend with their middle fingers raised, along with text expressing a similar sentiment. Using a curse word four times, the student expressed her dissatisfaction with “school,” “softball,” “cheer” and “everything.”

Though Snapchat messages are ephemeral by design, another student took a screenshot of this one and showed it to her mother, a coach. The school suspended the student from cheerleading for a year, saying the punishment was needed to “avoid chaos” and maintain a “teamlike environment.”

The student sued the school district, winning a sweeping victory in the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in Philadelphia. The court said the First Amendment did not allow public schools to punish students for speech outside school grounds....CONTINUED.....

Link: https://www.yahoo.com/news/cheerleaders-vulgar-message-prompts-first-131037750.html
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I believe in free speech, as well as the freedom to face the consequences of that speech. I am concerned that the Supreme Court will uphold this ruling, and will only promote the decline of our already crude deteriorating public conversation (especially after what we have seen over the last four years).