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In this thread the argument has strayed from the facts. I found a Washington Post article that states the facts and the progress of the case thus far. I think it can help us here in basing our opinions on what happened and correcting some false assumptions.
These are a few short excerpts:
None of that was on Levy’s mind, of course, when she and a friend were at the Cocoa Hut, a 24-hour convenience store in Mahanoy City, a town in Pennsylvania’s coal country about 40 miles southwest of Wilkes-Barre. After a year on the Golden Bears junior varsity squad, she had hoped to move up to varsity. Worse, in her view, a rising freshman had gotten a spot ahead of her.
“I was just feeling really frustrated and upset at everything that day,” said Levy, now 18 and a college student studying accounting.
Besides the snap in which she and her friend posed with middle fingers extended, she sent another: “Love how me and [another student, whom Levy identified by name] get told we need a year of jv before we make varsity but that doesn’t matter to anyone else?” She signed off with an upside-down smiley face.
It was sent to about 250 people who received Levy’s snaps, which dissolve within 24 hours. “I didn’t think it would have had an effect on anyone, and it didn’t really,” Levy said.
But one person took a screenshot and showed it to another, who happened to be the daughter of one of the cheerleading coaches. Some cheerleaders complained about Levy’s message, and the coaches decided to suspend her from the squad for a year.
A district judge agreed that the suspension from the squad violated the First Amendment, noting that Brandi’s speech was not disruptive. He ordered her reinstated to the JV squad in her sophomore year, and she made varsity her junior and senior years.
“It was a little awkward,” she said, but the most lasting effect of the case is that fellow students sometimes call her “B.L.” because the case is Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L.
This was the actual relevant language:
“F--- school, f--- softball, f--- cheer, f--- everything,” 14-year-old Brandi Levy typed into Snapchat one spring Saturday."
OMG at 14 she was banned from "varsity cheerleading" for the season? I though she could be expelled from school. So to hell with sportsmanship.
And if the cheerleading coach had posted that exact same thing online? Protected free speech?
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