Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L.
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

''Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L.'', 594 U.S. ___ (2021), was a
United States Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...
case involving the ability of schools to regulate student speech made off-campus, including speech made on
social media Social media are interactive media technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression through virtual communities and networks. While challenges to the definition of ''social medi ...
. The case challenged past interpretation of ''
Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District ''Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District'', 393 U.S. 503 (1969), was a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court that defined First Amendment rights of students in U.S. public schools. The ''Tinker'' test, also ...
'' and '' Bethel School District v. Fraser'', previous Supreme Court decisions related to student speech which may be disruptive to the educational environment, in light of online communications. The case centered on Brandi Levy, identified as ''B.L.'' in pleadings, a student at Mahanoy Area High School in
Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania Mahanoy City (pronounced MAHA-noy, also MA-noy locally) is a borough located southwest of Wilkes-Barre and 13 miles southwest of Hazleton, in northern Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania. It is part of the Coal Region of Pennsylvania and is located ...
, who posted an angry, profane
Snapchat Snapchat is an American multimedia instant messaging app and service developed by Snap Inc., originally Snapchat Inc. One of the principal features of Snapchat is that pictures and messages are usually only available for a short time before the ...
message from an off-campus location after she failed to make the school's varsity
cheerleading Cheerleading is an activity in which the participants (called cheerleaders) cheer for their team as a form of encouragement. It can range from chanting slogans to intense physical activity. It can be performed to motivate sports teams, to ente ...
squad. Though sent to a private circle of friends and deleted later, the message was shown to school staff, and Levy was suspended from cheerleading the next year under the school's policy relating to social media. The Supreme Court affirmed the Third Circuit's ruling in regards to Levy's case in an 8–1 decision in June 2021, though overruled the Third Circuit's opinion related to off-campus speech relative to ''Tinker''. The Court affirmed that through ''Tinker'', schools may have a valid interest to regulate student speech off-campus that is disruptive, but did not define when this regulation can occur, leaving this open for lower courts in future litigation. The Supreme Court ruled specifically for Levy, holding that the school's interests to prevent disruption under ''Tinker'' were not sufficient to overcome her
First Amendment First or 1st is the ordinal form of the number one (#1). First or 1st may also refer to: *World record, specifically the first instance of a particular achievement Arts and media Music * 1$T, American rapper, singer-songwriter, DJ, and rec ...
rights.


Background

Brandi Levy was a ninth-grade student and
junior varsity Junior varsity (often called "JV") players are the members of a team who are not the main players in a competition (such as any football, basketball, or baseball game), usually at the high school level–– and formerly at the collegiate levelâ ...
(JV) cheerleader at Mahanoy Area High School, a public
secondary school A secondary school describes an institution that provides secondary education and also usually includes the building where this takes place. Some secondary schools provide both '' secondary education, lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) ...
operated by the Mahanoy Area School District, covering the area in and around Mahanoy City in
Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania Schuylkill County (, ; Pennsylvania Dutch: Schulkill Kaundi) is a county in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. It is located in the heart of Pennsylvania's Coal Region and is part of Northeastern Pennsylvania. As of the 2020 census, the popula ...
. In addition to cheering at football, basketball, and wrestling matches, her obligations as a cheerleader included raising additional funding for the squad from the community.''Mahanoy I'', 289 F. Supp. 3d at 610. As a condition of being a cheerleader, she was required to sign a code of conduct that required squad members to show respect for their teammates, coaches, the school, teachers, and other schools' cheerleaders; the rule also forbade the use of profanity. Another rule forbade cheerleaders from posting "negative information" about "cheerleading, cheerleaders or coaches" on the Internet.''Mahanoy II'', 376 F. Supp. 3d at 432–33. The code had been written by previous cheerleading coaches and approved by the school board. Near the end of the 2016–17 academic year, Levy tried out for the next year's cheerleading squad. She hoped to make the varsity squad, but the two coaches, both teachers in the district, found her only good enough for the JV squad. An eighth-grader at the tryouts, meanwhile, made the varsity squad. The following weekend, Levy and a friend commiserated about the apparent unfairness of this at the Cocoa Hut, a convenience store in downtown Mahanoy City where students often socialized. Using Levy's smartphone, the two took a
selfie A selfie () is a self-portrait photograph, typically taken with a digital camera or smartphone, which may be held in the hand or supported by a selfie stick. Selfies are often shared on social media, via social networking services such as ...
with middle fingers raised and posted it to her
Snapchat Snapchat is an American multimedia instant messaging app and service developed by Snap Inc., originally Snapchat Inc. One of the principal features of Snapchat is that pictures and messages are usually only available for a short time before the ...
account with the text "fuck school fuck softball fuck cheer fuck everything". A followup Snap expressed their frustration about being kept on the JV squad while the incoming freshman girl made varsity; they believed they were being treated unfairly. Levy sent the two Snaps to a group of approximately 250 friends, many of whom were fellow students, and some of them were cheerleaders themselves. The Snap itself self-deleted in a short period of time, but one of Levy's teammates took a screenshot. One of those teammates was the daughter of one of the coaches, and had herself been suspended from cheering at a few games after she had posted disparaging remarks online about another school's cheerleading uniforms. By the time school resumed the following week, the screenshot had been widely shared among students, especially the cheerleaders. Some who had seen it came to the cheerleading coaches "visibly upset" by the Snap over the next few days. At the end of the week one of the coaches pulled Levy out of class to inform her that she was suspended from cheerleading for the next year as a result of her Snap. Levy's parents appealed the suspension to the school board, which upheld it.


Lower courts


District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania

Levy, represented by her parents and supported by the
American Civil Liberties Union The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1920 "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States". T ...
, sued the school in federal court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania. Her attorney emphasized that her remarks were those of frustration made on her own social media account on her own time and contained neither threats nor any mention of the name of her school. In October 2017, four months after Levy was suspended from cheerleading, Judge
A. Richard Caputo Albert Richard Caputo (May 22, 1938 – March 11, 2020) was a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania. Education and career Born in Port Chester, New York, Caputo received an A ...
granted her a
preliminary injunction An injunction is a legal and equitable remedy in the form of a special court order that compels a party to do or refrain from specific acts. ("The court of appeals ... has exclusive jurisdiction to enjoin, set aside, suspend (in whole or in par ...
that prohibited the school from enforcing the suspension. Caputo held that Levy would suffer
irreparable harm An irreparable injury is, in equity, "the type of harm which no monetary compensation can cure or put conditions back the way they were." The irreparable injury rule It has traditionally been a requirement of equity that no relief can be granted un ...
without the injunction. "Simply put, the ability of a school to punish lewd or profane speech disappears once a student exits school grounds." Caputo added that the school could not curb Levy's off-campus speech per '' Bethel School District v. Fraser'' and that the speech did not disrupt the school's operation per ''
Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District ''Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District'', 393 U.S. 503 (1969), was a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court that defined First Amendment rights of students in U.S. public schools. The ''Tinker'' test, also ...
''. He rejected the district's arguments that Levy had waived her constitutional rights by joining the cheerleading squad based on previous case law, that it could not be liable for the coaches' actions since it had approved the code Levy had signed, and that she had no constitutional right to be a cheerleader since it was irrelevant whether she did or not. "The District's concession that Levy's speech occurred off-campus is all but fatal", he said, finding that ''Tinker'' and ''Fraser''s exceptions did not apply as her speech was neither disruptive nor on-campus respectively. Caputo allowed that there were some other cases which allowed schools to impose greater speech limits on student athletes, but those did not come into play since Levy was not engaging in school-sponsored speech.


Third Circuit

The school district appealed Caputo's decision to the
Third Circuit Court of Appeals The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit (in case citations, 3d Cir.) is a federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the district courts for the following districts: * District of Delaware * District of New Jersey * E ...
. A three-judge panel acknowledged that "B.L.'s snap was crude, rude, and juvenile, just as we might expect of an adolescent", but upheld the District Court's holding in her favor, again finding that both ''Tinker'' and ''Fraser'' did not support restricting her off-campus speech. Writing for the panel, Judge Cheryl Ann Krause agreed with Caputo that the speech had clearly been off-campus, thus punishing Levy for it violated her First Amendment rights. The school district appealed this ruling.


Supreme Court of the United States

The school district petitioned the Supreme Court to take the case, arguing that particularly with the
COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...
, the nature of online communications required reevaluation of the distinction between on versus off-campus speech in the context of
distance learning Distance education, also known as distance learning, is the education of students who may not always be physically present at a school, or where the learner and the teacher are separated in both time and distance. Traditionally, this usually in ...
. The Supreme Court granted ''
certiorari In law, ''certiorari'' is a court process to seek judicial review of a decision of a lower court or government agency. ''Certiorari'' comes from the name of an English prerogative writ, issued by a superior court to direct that the record of ...
''. ''
Amicus curiae An ''amicus curiae'' (; ) is an individual or organization who is not a party to a legal case, but who is permitted to assist a court by offering information, expertise, or insight that has a bearing on the issues in the case. The decision on ...
'' supporting Levy arrived from free speech advocacy groups and religious groups such as the
Alliance Defending Freedom Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF, formerly Alliance Defense Fund) is an American conservative Christian legal advocacy group that works to curtail rights for LGBTQ people; expand Christian practices within public schools and in government; and ...
which expressed concern that a ruling favoring the school could lead to prosecution of a student's religious beliefs. Those supporting the school included anti-
cyberbullying Cyberbullying or cyberharassment is a form of bullying or harassment using electronic means. Cyberbullying and cyberharassment are also known as online bullying. It has become increasingly common, especially among teenagers, as the digital ...
advocacy groups like the Cyberbullying Research Center, who believed that a ruling favoring the student would limit schools' ability to regulate and take action against cyberbullying. The federal government under acting solicitor general
Elizabeth Prelogar Elizabeth Barchas Prelogar (born 1980) is an American lawyer who has served as solicitor general of the United States since October 2021. She served as acting solicitor general from January 20, at the start of the Biden administration, until Pres ...
urged the Supreme Court to find an intermediate position, by recognizing that while the court had previously ruled that off-campus speech cannot be regulated, there are some types of student speech over which schools should have oversight when that speech threatens the school or targets individual members of the school.


Oral arguments

Oral arguments were heard on April 28, 2021. Reporters for the
Associated Press The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. newspa ...
and
Reuters Reuters ( ) is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters Corporation. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide. Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world. The agency was estab ...
who observed the oral arguments stated that it was unclear if the court would accept the
bright-line A bright-line rule is an objective legal standard that does not allow courts to weigh other factors. Bright line may also refer to: *Brightline, a rail system in Florida, USA * Bright railway line, a defunct rail line in Australia *A Spectral line ...
ruling of the Third Circuit, as they argued there were compelling reasons for the school to have authority over some types of off-campus speech made on social media. At the same time, the reporters stated that the Justices were also wary of giving schools too much oversight of off-campus speech due to the extent of off-campus speech's reach into the schools due to social media use. The Justices considered whether this case was an appropriate vehicle to define new bounds for protections related to student speech, arguing under ''Tinker'' that Levy's Snapchat post may simply not have been sufficiently disruptive to warrant action by the school. '' Vox'' Ian Millhiser stated that the Justices argued for a more narrow ruling than the case had appeared to originally merit and it was unlikely to become a
landmark decision Landmark court decisions, in present-day common law legal systems, establish precedents that determine a significant new legal principle or concept, or otherwise substantially affect the interpretation of existing law. "Leading case" is commonly u ...
. ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' reported that the Justices seemed sympathetic to Levy. Justice Stephen Breyer doubted that her Snap had been significantly disruptive to the school's operations, and that if it was, "my goodness, every school in the country would be doing nothing but punishing." Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a youth basketball coach himself, said the yearlong suspension seemed excessive, but he appeared to reporter
Adam Liptak Adam Liptak (born September 2, 1960) is an American journalist, lawyer and instructor in law and journalism. He is the Supreme Court correspondent for '' The New York Times''. Liptak has written for '' The New Yorker'', ''Vanity Fair'', '' Rolli ...
to be expressing the views of several other Justices when he said the court's opinion should not be a "treatise" and that "the First Amendment does not categorically prohibit public schools from disciplining students for speech that occurs off campus, period."


Decision

The Supreme Court issued its decision on June 23, 2021, and affirmed the Third Circuit's ruling in an 8–1 judgement. The majority opinion was written by Justice Breyer, and overruled some of the Third Circuit's majority opinion in relationship to ''Tinker'' in that it was too broad towards off-campus speech, and that schools may have a legitimate interest to restrict off-campus speech, such as in relation to harassment and bullying. However, the majority did not try to define the bounds when this applies: "We do not now set forth a broad, highly general First Amendment rule stating just what counts as 'off campus' speech and whether or how ordinary First Amendment standards must give way off campus to a school’s special need to prevent… substantial disruption of learning-related activities or the protection of those who make up a school community." Breyer identified three factors related to off-campus speech that should be considered in future litigation: that off-campus speech is usually the responsibility of the student's parents, that off-campus speech covers virtually any activity outside of the school facility, and that the school has a responsibility to protect unpopular ideas by students. Of the latter point, Breyer said "The school itself has an interest in protecting a student's unpopular expression, especially when the expression takes place off campus," because "America's public schools are the nurseries of democracy." Turning specifically to Levy's case, Breyer wrote that while the school may have a valid interest to control student speech off campus, the school district violated Levy's
First Amendment First or 1st is the ordinal form of the number one (#1). First or 1st may also refer to: *World record, specifically the first instance of a particular achievement Arts and media Music * 1$T, American rapper, singer-songwriter, DJ, and rec ...
rights in reprimanding her for her post. Breyer stated that if Levy had been an adult, her Snapchat post would have been protected by the First Amendment, and that there was no evidence that her post created the type of disruption that ''Tinker'' addressed. Other aspects of Levy's case worked in her favor, including the fact that her Snapchat message was sent to a private circle of friends, and that it did not explicitly name the school or target any individuals. Breyer wrote: "It might be tempting to dismiss (the student's) words as unworthy of the robust First Amendment protections discussed herein. But sometimes it is necessary to protect the superfluous in order to preserve the necessary." Justice Samuel Alito wrote a concurring opinion opining that "there is a category of speech that is almost always beyond the regulatory authority of a public school. This is student speech that is not expressly and specifically directed at the school, school administrators, teachers, or fellow students and that addresses matters of public concern, including sensitive subjects like politics, religion, and social relations. Speech on such matters lies at the heart of the First Amendment's protection." He considered that a school that punished a student for speaking out against it would be attempting a " heckler's veto".
Justice Clarence Thomas Clarence Thomas (born June 23, 1948) is an American jurist who serves as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He was nominated by President George H. W. Bush to succeed Thurgood Marshall and has served since 199 ...
, the lone dissenter, opined that the ''Tinker'' Court had never sufficiently explained how the First Amendment would have been understood as applying to student speech at the time the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified, and cited prior state cases from that period suggesting it was not; Thomas stated "a more searching review reveals that schools historically could discipline students in circumstances like those presented here". Thomas wrote "the majority fails to consider whether schools often will have more authority, not less, to discipline students who transmit speech through social media". He also wrote that the school should have been able to restrict Levy's speech as students "who are active in extracurricular programs have a greater potential, by virtue of their participation, to harm those programs".


See also

*
List of United States Supreme Court cases involving the First Amendment This is a list of cases that appeared before the Supreme Court of the United States involving the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The establishment of religion Blue laws * '' McGowan v. Maryland'' (1961) * '' Braunfeld v. ...


Notes


References

* {{US1stAmendment, speech 2020 in United States case law American Civil Liberties Union litigation Cheerleading Education in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania History of Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania Snap Inc. Student rights case law in the United States United States children's rights case law United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit cases United States Free Speech Clause case law United States Internet case law United States Supreme Court cases United States Supreme Court cases of the Roberts Court