Isaw this ruling from Judge Mark Kravitz of the US District Court that basically says that a high school student who posts something that the school might not like, ie, criticizing an action the school takes, and does it NOT ON SCHOOL TIME, NOT ON SCHOOL PROPERTY, doesn't have free speech rights... Why? Because, um, somebody ON school property might READ THE BLOG!
School officials acted within their rights to discipline a student for an Internet posting she wrote off school grounds, a federal judge has ruled.
U.S. District Court Judge Mark Kravitz rejected Avery Doninger’s claim that administrators at Lewis B. Mills High School violated her rights of free speech and equal protection.
She also alleged they inflicted emotional distress when they barred her from serving as class secretary because of the 2007 posting, which criticized administrators for canceling a popular school activity.
Kravitz’s ruling relied partly on the ambiguity over whether schools can regulate students’ expression on the Internet. He noted in his ruling that times have changed since 1979, when a landmark student speech case set boundaries for schools regulating off-campus speech.
This is the same guy who didn't want to see the Patriot Act challenged. He doesn't seem too concerned with citizen's consitutional protections.
Now, he wrote, students can send e-mails to hundreds of classmates at a time or post entries that can be read instantly by students, teachers, and administrators.
“Off-campus speech can become on-campus speech with the click of a mouse,” Kravitz wrote.
It isn't as if students are sending hundreds of emails within the school are they? If so, you mean to tell me that the IT person in charge of the school can't block emails? Heck, in GRISD, the IT person is setting up blogs for the teachers-I assume it isn't the students who have blogs, but if they create a blog or Facebook or Myspace account from their homes, it isn't on campus. IF the school then wanted to block Facebook, etc from being seen, any competent IT person can do that.
Kravitz cited previous rulings in his decision that school administrators were entitled to qualified immunity. That shields public officials from lawsuits for damages unless they violate clearly established rights that a reasonable official would have known.
The officials couldn’t reasonably be expected “to predict where the line between on- and off-campus speech will be drawn in this new digital era,” he wrote.
Well, then perhaps there shouldn't BE a distinction between one's free speech rights on or off campus if a person who ought to reasonably know whether the school district provides that electronic platform can't tell the difference. Seems to me that whole decision was more about whether a school could be sued if the people running it are not competent enough to know the difference between on or off campus speech.
Totally ridiculous. I'm glad to read that the attorneys are going to take this to the Supreme Court.
Adding link to CT blog Cool Justice for more links and comments on this.
Update: Feb 9 2009- looks like the student is going to appeal GOOD FOR HER. Retaliating against her for writing something on her own computer from home on her own blog is WRONG. especially for a dang school -New Haven Register
Doninger, then a Student Council member and junior class secretary, was organizing an annual student rock concert, Jamfest. But when Principal Karissa Niehoff said logistical problems prevented the concert from happening on the date favored by students, Doninger and three other students went to the school computer lab and sent an e-mail message to many local residents, urging them to protest Niehoff’s decision.
That night, Doninger posted a blog entry that said: “Jamfest is cancelled, due to douche bags in central office.”
Doninger also encouraged her readers to write to Region 10 School District Superintendent Paula Schwartz “to piss her off more.”
In his ruling, Kravitz rejected Doninger’s claims that administrators violated her rights to free speech and equal protection and intentionally inflicted emotional distress when they punished her by refusing to let her run for class secretary. Two other courts previously issued similar rulings.
