#215, Jurisdiction
So a 14-year-old student— a public school student— named Brandi Levy was having a very bad day on a Saturday a few years ago. She just learned that she wouldn’t make the varsity cheerleading team. She’d been on JV. She had high hopes for making varsity. And she and her friend went to the Coco Hut, which is a teen hangout convenience store in Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania. And there they posted a Snapchat message. They raised their middle fingers and, using a common swear word starting with the letter F, they said, F school, F softball, F cheer, and F everything. And they send this to 250 friends in the expectation that this will disappear after 24 hours. But another student takes a screenshot of it. The screenshot makes its way to one of the coaches. And young Brandi is suspended from the cheerleading team entirely for a year.
-A Cheerleader, a Snapchat Post and the Supreme Court (The Daily from The New York Times)
The school suspended Brandi because they felt she had done “grave damage” to the cheerleading team. Whether or not she did harm the team isn’t of consequence here though—the real question is: Do schools have the jurisdiction (n. the power or right to govern an area) to discipline students for off-campus speech?
On school grounds, they do have jurisdiction over students. School administrators can deal with troublemakers as they see fit. The moment a student steps outside of school boundaries though, does that influence remain? What if a student sends a hateful message about their class on KakaoTalk at a convenience mart near their school? What if a student posts an inappropriate image of a classmate on Instagram from home?
The answer isn't simple. The internet has made free speech rights infinitely more complex and raised novel issues that we simply haven't dealt with before. Brandi's case has gone through several lower courts in Pennsylvania until it finally reached the highest court in the land, The Supreme Court. The Justices are still deliberating the case.
To complete this Journal response, address the following:
Should schools have the jurisdiction to discipline (i.e., punish) students for speech outside of school grounds? (if it is school-related)
Comment on a peer's response.
-Brenden Lee Teacher