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‘Cursing cheerleader’ free speech

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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“F--- school, f--- softball, f--- cheer, f--- everything,” 14-year-old Brandi Levy typed into Snapchat one spring Saturday."

And if the cheerleading coach had posted that exact same thing online? Protected free speech?
Dude, of course not... (as was your point)
 

“Political tags — such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth — are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort.”​


― Robert A. Heinlein1
There is not a political conspiracy here... a kid crossed the line and got a punishment.
Parents across the globe do the same thing to their kids a couple hundred million times a day.
 
She's a school kid not the US ambassador to the UK.
I highly doubt she's signed a contract or that she's being paid so the school has no right to say what she can and can't do while not at school.
My daughter was a HS cheerleader, and yes, she did sign a contract. Further, she and all the others were admonished by the coach and staff that if they did ANYTHING on or off campus that would in anyway embarrass the school, they could and probably would be kicked off the squad. Funny thing, no student or parent ever had a problem with the ground rules.
 
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My daughter was a HS cheerleader, and yes, she did sign a contract. Further, she and all the others were admonished by the coach and staff that if they did ANYTHING on or off campus that would in anyway embarrass the school, they could and probably would be kicked off the squad. Funny thing, no student or parent ever had a problem with the ground rules.
/Like

And agreed.... same with my teams and my school currently.

Additionally, my high-school girlfriend was co-Captain of the Drill Team and they had very strict rules.
 
There is not a political conspiracy here... a kid crossed the line and got a punishment.
Parents across the globe do the same thing to their kids a couple hundred million times a day.
What punishment? She was suspended from the JV squad for a year. The courts ruled in her favor and the suspension was lifted. She was a JV cheerleader her sophomore year. She went on to the varsity squad her junior and senior year. She and the ACLU punished the school, not the other way around.

SCOTUS has yet to rule on whether she crossed the line. The lower courts ruled she didn't cross the line. Are we looking at the same case?

No said anything about a political conspiracy. Catch up.
 
She and the ACLU punished the school, not the other way around.

SCOTUS has yet to rule on whether she crossed the line.
LOL.
 
It is protected to a degree... telling your coach to **** off on Instagram one night might mean that the kid will not make the team because of behavior issues... can't tell your boss to **** off on Instagram and expect to have a job... but I agree that pretty much most lawful things should be protected.

Okay. Sure. Legit reasons for not making the team unrelated to content of the speech and not because of the speech is permissible.
 
Nope. The time, place and manner of speech is subject to restriction. Minors don't have the same rights as adults, and school administrations have regularly disciplined students for off campus actions.

Let’s dispense with the following legal fiction.

Minors don't have the same rights as adults

This is not true and there’s no case supporting this claim. Neither is there any evidence establishing minors have different rights than adults under the BOR or Constitution. Indeed, the plain text of the Constitution’s BOR makes no distinction between adult or child. You are peddling legal and historical fiction.

school administrations have regularly disciplined students for off campus actions.

So what? “Regularly” doesn’t and hasn’t ever made the thing done “regularly” lawful.

The time, place and manner of speech is subject to restriction.

First, if you’re inclined to argue the law, then you’d better know the subject matter. Time, place, and manner restrictions have a three prong test. The first prong is any restriction must be content neutral.

The school’s action here isn’t content neutral. It is because of the content of the speech that the girl was reprimanded. So, you’ve lost any tenable argument for time, place, and manner restrictions.

Second, time, place, and manner restrictions are narrowly tailored. There’s no evidence of any established “restriction” by the school. Indeed, the school isn’t arguing they have any such restriction. Rather, they’ve argued for a broader authority than pigeon holing themselves into some specific, narrowly tailored restriction, by invoking the Tinker test to A.) Stretch the school’s authority to the student’s off campus speech to B) Punish the student. The school invoked the Tinker test, and not any time, place, and manner test and for very good reasons.

Third, time, place, and manner restrictions must leave alternative means/channels for communicating the speakers’ message. Yet, the school is objecting to the message itself! The school is arguing regardless of the channel/ means used to communicate the message, they can punish the student because of the message.

So, no, time, place, and manner isn’t a visible doctrine here.

Second, no case in the U.S. to my knowledge has ever stretched time, place, and manner restrictions as you advocate here. Time, place, and manner restrictions are content neutral and seek to restrict speech that is so noisy as to disturb their neighbors, speech that obstructs traffic, but have NEVER included speech that offends, speech that hurts people’s feelings, speech that hurts anyone’s emotions, etcetera.
 
My daughter was a HS cheerleader, and yes, she did sign a contract. Further, she and all the others were admonished by the coach and staff that if they did ANYTHING on or off campus that would in anyway embarrass the school, they could and probably would be kicked off the squad. Funny thing, no student or parent ever had a problem with the ground rules.

Okay. Edifying but are you of the opinion is a legal restriction of.a student/cheerleader’s off campus speech?
 
Yep... as well they should be allowed to... a school is literally chaos without teacher/Admin control over students crossing the line.

For speech made off of campus that is lawful? Doubtful.

Drama teacher? I ask because this hyperbolic notion the school system is descending into a Lord of the Flies chaos, “literally chaos” as a result of free speech rights for kids off school property, speech that is lawful, is untethered from reality. Students have for many years exercising controversial, offensive, free speech rights off of school property for over 50 years and there hasn’t been this “literally chaos” you reference.

And time, placer, and manner restriction is absolutely not, in most speech restrictions, what a school wants to argue, unless it wants to lose. Furthermore, time, place and manner restrictions are inapplicable to these facts. See post 85.
 
Yes, at night from the teacher's home. Could the PE teacher for the cheerleaders post "F... cheerleaders" and it is protected by free speech so could not be reprimanded or discharged? What about a student naming a teacher with her "Fxxx" or teacher naming a student?

Maybe not. As the combination of an expletive in relation to a person, or a group of people, such as “F*ck” Mr. Belding, or directed at a specific group “F*ck” cheerleaders, can be within the Fighting Words Doctrine, first announced in the Chaplinsky case, and narrowed in subsequent decisions. As I have told high school students who complain about an inability to tell their fellow classmates to “f” off while in school, the use of the “F” word directed at someone, such as “F” you, or “F” off, is recognized as personally provocative and imminently inviting/provoking a fight.

However, the Court has also determined not every use of the “F” word constitutes as fighting words. In Cohen v California, the defendant wore a jacket to court with the words “F*** the Draft” on the back. The Court quickly dispensed with any notion the use of the “F” word rendered the message as “fighting words,” and said, “ While the four-letter word displayed by Cohen in relation to the draft is not uncommonly employed in a personally provocative fashion, in this instance it was clearly not 'directed to the person of the hearer.'”

This girl’s speech isn’t within the fighting words doctrine. “ F***school f*** softball f***cheer f*** everything.” This isn’t directed at a specific person or group of people.
 
Maybe not. As the combination of an expletive in relation to a person, or a group of people, such as “F*ck” Mr. Belding, or directed at a specific group “F*ck” cheerleaders, can be within the Fighting Words Doctrine, first announced in the Chaplinsky case, and narrowed in subsequent decisions. As I have told high school students who complain about an inability to tell their fellow classmates to “f” off while in school, the use of the “F” word directed at someone, such as “F” you, or “F” off, is recognized as personally provocative and imminently inviting/provoking a fight.

However, the Court has also determined not every use of the “F” word constitutes as fighting words. In Cohen v California, the defendant wore a jacket to court with the words “F*** the Draft” on the back. The Court quickly dispensed with any notion the use of the “F” word rendered the message as “fighting words,” and said, “ While the four-letter word displayed by Cohen in relation to the draft is not uncommonly employed in a personally provocative fashion, in this instance it was clearly not 'directed to the person of the hearer.'”

This girl’s speech isn’t within the fighting words doctrine. “ F***school f*** softball f***cheer f*** everything.” This isn’t directed at a specific person or group of people.

The topic of fighting words is interesting, but I do not see the relevance. Rather, it is a question of disruption and sportsmanship. She was already a cheerleader, just didn't get on the varsity team at 15, and her conduct was extremely unsportsman like, with attacking another team with F-bombs. It could be very disrupting of cheerleading classes and bring greater dispersion on the cheerleading team an coach, tempting it just becoming enlightened as dumb teens can be to evolve to widespread attack of the cheerleaders and coach(s). It also is herself making herself the center of attention - rather than on the team.

There are other detrimental results that could seriously negative consequences. With it, the other cheerleaders maybe really didn't want her after that - and I think that would be for good reasons too. This was NOT about "school." It was about non-academic activities unrelated to school and instead about competitive athletic and sportsmanship. Throwing that tantrum for losing winning a promotion is as bad sportsmanship as it gets.

I do not think suspended from that season's or year's cheerleading squad was excessive.
 
Rather, it is a question of disruption and sportsmanship.

There are other detrimental results that could seriously negative consequences. With it, the other cheerleaders maybe really didn't want her after that - and I think that would be for good reasons too. This was NOT about "school." It was about non-academic activities unrelated to school and instead about competitive athletic and sportsmanship. Throwing that tantrum for losing winning a promotion is as bad sportsmanship as it gets.

I do not think suspended from that season's or year's cheerleading squad was excessive.

The topic of fighting words is interesting, but I do not see the relevance.

Oh? You asked the question. I provided the answer. Your examples wouldn’t receive 1st Amendment free speech protection because they qualify as fighting words, whereas the cheerleader’s examples aren’t fighting words. Hence, in your examples the teacher can, consistent with the 1st Amendment free speech clause, be terminated for their speech in your examples, whereas the student’s use of the F word isn’t actionable under the fighting words doctrine.

My response is relevant to what you asked.

She was already a cheerleader, just didn't get on the varsity team at 15, and her conduct was extremely unsportsman like, with attacking another team with F-bombs. It could be very disrupting of cheerleading classes and bring greater dispersion on the cheerleading team an coach, tempting it just becoming enlightened as dumb teens can be to evolve to widespread attack of the cheerleaders and coach(s). It also is herself making herself the center of attention - rather than on the team.

The issue does involve disruption, but not “could be” disruptive. The “could be disruptive” isn’t sufficient to protect the very free speech the Court has said students have in school. Their is a wide range of speech that “could be disruptive” permitting the school to accomplish the very end result the Court said they may not, doing away with free speech rights in school.

The proper and correct standard is any disruption from student speech must “materially and substantially interfere” with the operation of the school. The case announcing this test is Tinker v Des Moines.

There’s no evidence the student’s speech “materially and substantially interfered” with the operation of the school. So, based on the Tinker test, the student’s speech was protected speech.

Another related issue is whether the Tinker test is applicable to speech by a student away from school. The third circuit, in which she won on appeal, has rightly determined, consistently, that the school’s authority to punish speech ends at school property and ends away from off campus school activities and events when and where the speech is lawful.

The idea the school may punish lawful speech of students off of school property and away from off campus school activities isn’t consistent with free speech. Free speech means, in the privacy of one’s home, or in a private setting, expressing what is on one’s mind without reprisal from the government. This is true of adults and school aged children.

And “bad sportsmanship” is too ambiguous, amorphous, and metaphysical to properly protect free speech. Bad sportsmanship be damned as it relates to free speech rights.
 

‘Cursing cheerleader’ free speech case to be argued in Supreme Court​





How SCOTUS decides this may be an indicator of how conservative the Court will be. Interesting case.

Do you have a link from a reputable source?

Thanks
 
Oh? You asked the question. I provided the answer. Your examples wouldn’t receive 1st Amendment free speech protection because they qualify as fighting words, whereas the cheerleader’s examples aren’t fighting words. Hence, in your examples the teacher can, consistent with the 1st Amendment free speech clause, be terminated for their speech in your examples, whereas the student’s use of the F word isn’t actionable under the fighting words doctrine.

My response is relevant to what you asked.



The issue does involve disruption, but not “could be” disruptive. The “could be disruptive” isn’t sufficient to protect the very free speech the Court has said students have in school. Their is a wide range of speech that “could be disruptive” permitting the school to accomplish the very end result the Court said they may not, doing away with free speech rights in school.

The proper and correct standard is any disruption from student speech must “materially and substantially interfere” with the operation of the school. The case announcing this test is Tinker v Des Moines.

There’s no evidence the student’s speech “materially and substantially interfered” with the operation of the school. So, based on the Tinker test, the student’s speech was protected speech.

Another related issue is whether the Tinker test is applicable to speech by a student away from school. The third circuit, in which she won on appeal, has rightly determined, consistently, that the school’s authority to punish speech ends at school property and ends away from off campus school activities and events when and where the speech is lawful.

The idea the school may punish lawful speech of students off of school property and away from off campus school activities isn’t consistent with free speech. Free speech means, in the privacy of one’s home, or in a private setting, expressing what is on one’s mind without reprisal from the government. This is true of adults and school aged children.

And “bad sportsmanship” is too ambiguous, amorphous, and metaphysical to properly protect free speech. Bad sportsmanship be damned as it relates to free speech rights.

That certainly is the plaintiff's arguments. Probably will win too. The response and effect, of course, is more destruction. Schools rightly should end all athletics if the school using sports to teach general lessons of acting as a team in a sportsmanlike manner - and the consequences of not doing so - is declared illegal by the Supreme Court.

Learning to function with others in group activity for the goals of the whole group and learning the consequences of not doing so be damn compared to the beloved F-bomb juvenile tantrums.

How many more things can progressive Democrats who hate American culture and values destroy? Athletics overall is extremely high on their list to destroy in general. Overall, such attitudes and court actions have ground our school system and actual educational levels of American students into the dirt.
 
What if she messaged, "F Biden, F the Democratic Party, F it all," to the same people causing the same fuss?

Using the F bomb like she did instead of the initial like I did. It's reasonable to assume some students and parents would be upset and complain to the school. Can the school punish her? Should the school punish her?
No, the school cannot punish her. As long as she does not liable/slander someone, or advocate the violent overthrow of government, she can say whatever she wants and be as offensive as she wants, and there isn't a damn thing the school or any other government agency can do about it.
 
I don't understand what's going on here.
Is a school really trying to kick someone out for swearing while not in school?
Has the USA really become that puritanical?
If this was the rule in the UK we'd end up with about 7 kids finishing a school year if we're lucky.
The UK arrests on average nine people every day for what they post online. The last place on the planet that should be lecturing anyone on free speech is the UK.

 
Let’s dispense with the following legal fiction.



This is not true and there’s no case supporting this claim. Neither is there any evidence establishing minors have different rights than adults under the BOR or Constitution. Indeed, the plain text of the Constitution’s BOR makes no distinction between adult or child. You are peddling legal and historical fiction.



So what? “Regularly” doesn’t and hasn’t ever made the thing done “regularly” lawful.



First, if you’re inclined to argue the law, then you’d better know the subject matter. Time, place, and manner restrictions have a three prong test. The first prong is any restriction must be content neutral.

The school’s action here isn’t content neutral. It is because of the content of the speech that the girl was reprimanded. So, you’ve lost any tenable argument for time, place, and manner restrictions.

Second, time, place, and manner restrictions are narrowly tailored. There’s no evidence of any established “restriction” by the school. Indeed, the school isn’t arguing they have any such restriction. Rather, they’ve argued for a broader authority than pigeon holing themselves into some specific, narrowly tailored restriction, by invoking the Tinker test to A.) Stretch the school’s authority to the student’s off campus speech to B) Punish the student. The school invoked the Tinker test, and not any time, place, and manner test and for very good reasons.

Third, time, place, and manner restrictions must leave alternative means/channels for communicating the speakers’ message. Yet, the school is objecting to the message itself! The school is arguing regardless of the channel/ means used to communicate the message, they can punish the student because of the message.

So, no, time, place, and manner isn’t a visible doctrine here.

Second, no case in the U.S. to my knowledge has ever stretched time, place, and manner restrictions as you advocate here. Time, place, and manner restrictions are content neutral and seek to restrict speech that is so noisy as to disturb their neighbors, speech that obstructs traffic, but have NEVER included speech that offends, speech that hurts people’s feelings, speech that hurts anyone’s emotions, etcetera.
"It would be a mistake, however, to conclude from these pronouncements that the Court, having decided in the late 1960s and the 1970s that children are "persons," determined that children should have the same set of constitutional rights that we ascribe to adults. If the Court did see children as persons, then it surely saw them as peculiar sorts of persons for purposes of constitutional analysis. For example, during the 1970s the Court also decided that juveniles did not have three of the procedural rights that adults take for granted: the right to a trial by jury,' the right to bail prior to adjudication,14 and the right to be protected from corporal punishment.' The only additional good news for advocates of children's rights during this period consisted of rulings in two cases that extended the right to privacy in abortion cases to unmarried minor females.'

"As a general rule, schools cannot bar you from wearing clothing simply because they disapprove of the message that the clothing conveys. However, schools can prohibit you from wearing clothing with “indecent” or other messages that may cause a disruption."
 
The UK arrests on average nine people every day for what they post online. The last place on the planet that should be lecturing anyone on free speech is the UK.


There's a massive difference between hate speech and simply calling someone a twat.
I'm free to call anyone any curse word I like but I'm not free to post death threats or racial abuse. Pretty simple really.
 
No, there isn't. Only those who utterly despise free speech can contrive something inane as "hate speech."

So, you think there's zero difference between me calling you an idiot and threatening to pop round and murder your entire family.

One of those will get me hauled into a police station.

I wasn't calling you an idiot by the way that was just part of the example.
 
So, you think there's zero difference between me calling you an idiot and threatening to pop round and murder your entire family.

One of those will get me hauled into a police station.

I wasn't calling you an idiot by the way that was just part of the example.
In the US they are both protected forms of speech.

As I previously pointed out, as long as you do not slander/liable anyone, or threaten to overthrow the government by force, your speech is protected in the US. Individual rights cannot be used to harm anyone, either physically or financially. Hence the prohibition against liable/slander.

Don't feel bad, the UK is not the only anti-free speech nation. All of them are. The US is unique among nations in that it actually protects free speech from being infringed upon by government. No other nation on the planet does that.
 
No, there isn't. Only those who utterly despise free speech can contrive something inane as "hate speech."
Hate speech is speech the powerful hate.
 
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