SCOTUS Backs Cheerleader, limits school...

[PayrollHRGuy]

8-1 Decision

https://www.scotusblog.com/2021/06/court-rules-for-high-school-cheerleader-in-first-amendment-dispute-over-snapchat-profanity/

 

[quincy]

8-1 Decision

https://www.scotusblog.com/2021/06/court-rules-for-high-school-cheerleader-in-first-amendment-dispute-over-snapchat-profanity/

Justice Thomas’ dissent was a bit silly. Cooler heads prevailed in this particular case, given its facts.

 

[zddoodah]

Yeesh. The school lost in the district court and then appealed to the circuit court and lost again and then appealed to SCOTUS. What a colossal waste of public money, although it's certainly possible that some outside person or group funded the appeals out of a desire to generate a decision in a "
case in which [SCOTUS has] considered the constitutionality of a public school’s attempt to regulate true off-premises student speech." Mahanoy Area School Dist. v. B.L., 594 U.S. __, slip op. at 1 (2021) (Alito, J., concurring). That the Court decided to hear the case despite Ms. Levy having graduated in 2020 suggests the Court was also interested in generating such a decision.

 

[PayrollHRGuy]

Considering that most of the communications between high school students (other than the vanishingly few times they actually talk face-to-face) is recorded for posterity and is public in many cases there really did need to be a ruling on the subject.

 

[quincy]

Considering that most of the communications between high school students (other than the vanishingly few times they actually talk face-to-face) is recorded for posterity and is public in many cases there really did need to be a ruling on the subject.

Actually no new territory was really covered. The Court essentially said that schools can sometimes control student speech outside school and that schools sometimes can’t control student speech outside school.

 

[Taxing Matters]

That decision was a good one, on the whole, by the court. And the 8-1 majority makes it clear that the principles outlined there are not just liberal or conservative ones, but rather more universal.

And the day before the Supreme Court handed another win to students, this time college student athletes in their battle against the NCAA restrictions on compensation. The opinion, though on somewhat narrow grounds given how the parties set up the issues for the court, was unanimous. However, the concurrence of Justice Kavanaugh is more general and sends a warning shot to the NCAA that the entirety of its restrictions on what schools pay student athletes is in jeopardy. I think the decision sound legally and is the result from a policy perspective that is long overdue. Congress could act to exempt the NCAA from anti-trust law, but I hope it will not buckle under NCAA pressure to do that. The opinion is here: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/20-512_gfbh.pdf

 

[quincy]

The Court’s NCAA ruling was a good one.

 

[zddoodah]

And the day before the Supreme Court handed another win to students, this time college student athletes in their battle against the NCAA restrictions on compensation.

It has long been my opinion that, at least as concerns football and basketball, major universities have been operating de facto minor league sports teams, and they should NOT be in that business.

 

[quincy]

In December 2020, Michigan’s Governor Whitmer signed into law two bills that will give student athletes the right to exercise their natural right of publicity, so they can be compensated financially for the use of their name, image, likeness, persona. The laws, which are to take effect in December 2022, will be the first time in Michigan’s history that student athletes will be permitted to personally capitalize financially on their athletic talents, other than receiving scholarships.

It was interesting to me to see some of the arguments that helped support the passage of Michigan’s bills used in the USSC NCAA case.

 

[PayrollHRGuy]

Actually no new territory was really covered. The Court essentially said that schools can sometimes control student speech outside school and that schools sometimes can’t control student speech outside school.

No, the ruling pretty much delineated when the school could control speech.

 

[quincy]

No, the ruling pretty much delineated when the school could control speech.

No. This decision simply said that, in this particular case given these particular facts, the posting on SnapChat by cheerleader Levy was protected by the First Amendment.

Justice Breyer said the Court was leaving “for future cases to decide where, when and how” schools could regulate students’ off-campus speech.

Here is a very brief overview of what the Supreme Court has said about students and free expression in past cases:

https://www.freedomforuminstitute.org/about/faq/what-has-the-supreme-court-said-about-free-expression/

 

[Taxing Matters]

No, the ruling pretty much delineated when the school could control speech.

The opinion does not set any bright lines (what lawyers call black letter law) regarding when the school may prohibit and punish what a student says off campus. It instead notes the factors that, in this particular case, meant that the school had exceeded its authority and improperly punished the student for her social media outburst. The Court specifically said, as quincy noted, that it was leaving it to future cases to sharpen exactly where the lines are. The result does make it pretty clear, though, that schools have to be really careful in trying to squash what students say off campus on their social media.

 

[quincy]

Or quash ...

 

[PayrollHRGuy]

Well if it isn't a bright line it seems, at least to me, a pretty well lit line.





(b) But three features of off-campus speech often, even if not always, distinguish schools’ efforts to regulate off-campus speech. First, a school will rarely stand in loco parentis when a student speaks off cam- pus. Second, from the student speaker’s perspective, regulations of off- campus speech, when coupled with regulations of on-campus speech, include all the speech a student utters during the full 24-hour day. That means courts must be more skeptical of a school’s efforts to regu- late off-campus speech, for doing so may mean the student cannot en- gage in that kind of speech at all. Third, the school itself has an inter- est in protecting a student’s unpopular expression, especially when the expression takes place off campus, because America’s public schools are the nurseries of democracy. Taken together, these three features of much off-campus speech mean that the leeway the First Amendment grants to schools in light of their special characteristics is diminished. Pp. 6–8.

 

[Taxing Matters]

Or quash ...

Both squash and quash work. One of the definitions of squash per Webster's online dictionary is: "put down, suppress". Therefore that word choice was perfectly accurate for the context of my sentence.