Supreme Court rejects student social media cases

The Supreme Court declined to clarify on what grounds public schools may punish students for their off-campus online speech.

The Justices have not squarely addressed the student-speech issue as it applies to the digital world—one filled with online social-networking tools such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and others. The issue before the Justices tests whether public schools may discipline students who, while off campus, use social-networking sites to mock school officials. The lower courts have been all over the map on the First Amendment issue because they maintain they have been saddled with a Vietnam War-era High Court precedent that predates the Internet. In the leading case of the three petitions the justices declined to review, the lower court opinion urged the Supreme Court to end the confusion of whether that older case does indeed still hold in the internet age. The National School Boards Association also urged the High Court to review the issue. The association and others told the Justices that “The ubiquitous use of social networking and other forms of online communication has resulted in a stunning increase in harmful student expression that school administrators are forced to address with no clear guiding jurisprudence.”