When high school cheerleader Brandi Levy didn’t make her varsity cheerleading squad, she took to the social media app Snapchat to vent her frustration. Her post saying, “‘F*** school, F*** cheerleading, F*** softball, F*** everything,'” was captured and shared with school staff. The school accused her of breaching a code of conduct and booted her off the junior varsity squad. She and her parents appealed the school’s decision all the way up the Supreme Court.
In an 8-1 decision authored by Justice Stephen Breyer, the court held that a schools’ authority to regulate student speech is highly limited in off-campus settings, including on social media. The Supreme Court ruled that the Mahanoy Area School District did not have sufficient cause to restrict Levy’s First Amendment rights in this case, though the court noted that there would be cases of off-campus speech that public schools could regulate, such as cases of severe bullying, harassment, and threats.
“We do not believe the special characteristics that give schools additional license to regulate student speech always disappear when a school regulates speech that takes place off campus,” Breyer wrote. “The school’s regulatory interests remain significant in some off-campus circumstances.”
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