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Friday, March 12, 2010

Courts - "3rd Circuit Asked to Clarify Student Internet Speech Cases"

Read this in conjunction with yesterday's ILB entry, "School sued for punishing teens over MySpace pix."

Shannon P. Duffy of The Legal Intelligencer reports today in a story headed "3rd Circuit Asked to Clarify Student Internet Speech Cases" that begins:

Cutting-edge questions in the First Amendment arena have recently stemmed from clashes between students and school districts over the limits -- if any -- that may be imposed on speech posted on social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook.

The cases sometimes pose difficult questions because the students claim that their speech occurred entirely outside of school, while school officials contend that discipline is warranted because the intended audience was the school community and the goal was to create a disturbance.

Now lawyers on both sides of the issue are urging the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to vacate two recent -- and seemingly conflicting -- decisions by two different three-judge panels, and to hold rearguments before the full court. Both cases involved high school students who were suspended for creating fake MySpace pages on their home computers to ridicule their principals.

Outsiders are also weighing in with amicus briefs that say the rulings have muddied the waters and left students and school officials guessing about where the lines have been drawn.

Lawyers for student journalists argue that the conflicting rulings will invite censorship. And lawyers who specialize in juvenile law argue that teenagers have always ridiculed authority figures and that courts should not condone punishing kids for their speech outside school hours and off school grounds.

While the legal issues in the two cases appeared identical, the courts reached opposite conclusions -- both at the trial level and on appeal.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on March 12, 2010 10:17 AM
Posted to Courts in general