The good news is that the lower court decision limiting student-to-student speech was upheld. Is it good or bad that student speech targeted at principals was not limited?
The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to take up major appeals involving student free speech rights on the Internet. One appeal encompassed two cases decided in June 2011 by the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit, in Philadelphia.
The 3rd Circuit held in the Blue Mountain case that a Pennsylvania middle school student’s 2007 MySpace parody depicting her principal as a sex addict and a pedophile was so outrageous that no one could have taken it seriously.
In a companion case, Layshock v. Hermitage School District, the 3rd Circuit court overturned the discipline of a Pennsylvania high school student who in 2005 had created a fake MySpace profile of his principal on a computer at his grandmother’s house.
Meanwhile, an appeal in Kowalski v. Berkeley County Schools (No. 11-461) involved a West Virginia student who was disciplined for creating a MySpace page targeting not an administrator but another student at her high school.
LINK: Supreme Court Declines Cases on Student Internet Speech
Post Source: EdWeek
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