A story of Snapchat filled with expletive has become the basis of a decision of the Supreme Court on Freedom of Expression. The Supreme Court decided that a Pennsylvania public school violated the first amendment rights of one of its students after the suspension of the pump pump team following a snapchat pole in which it has Declared “F-School F- Softball F- Journe F- All. “
At first glance, the case resembles the sort of disciplinary action that probably happens in most schools: a student, identified in judicial documents such as “BL”, did not make the pump pump team From Varsity and took a snapchat for “blowing steam” like Justice Brett Kavanaugh described. The post ends up going beyond his friends Snapchat, finally leading to his suspension of the pump pump team.
But in his decision, the Supreme Court clearly indicated that even an out-of-color speech is protected by the first amendment. “It might be tempting the words of B. L. as unworthy of the main robust amendment protections discussed here. But it is sometimes necessary to protect the superfluous in order to preserve the necessary,” wrote Justice Stephen Breyer in his majority opinion.
The case is also unique because it is one of the first time that the highest court of the nation weighed on the speech of students on the Internet, said Jeffrey Rosen, CEO of the National Constitutional Center. “One of the reasons for this case is so important is that this is the first opportunity of the Court to tackle the question of where to draw the line between campus and the speech off campus in an online world “said Rosen Engadget before the decision.
In its decision, the Supreme Court has left open questions about how social media affect how these lines should be drawn. The decision made more the fact that the speech took place off campus and not during a school function, rather than the way the comments were made. Although a separate opinion, Justice Samuel Alito noted that a school would have authority on what students say while participating in online learning or other “online school activities”.
In particular, in his dissident isolated, Justice Clarence Thomas has raised the role that social media could play in these decisions. “The majority fails to determine whether schools will often have more authority, no less, to discipline students who transmit speech through social media,” he wrote. “Because the speech on campus through social media can be received on campus (and can spread rapidly to countless people), it will often have a greater tendency to harm the school environment than of conversation in person off campus. “
Nevertheless, the decision could always influence how future cases are treated. “Students will have continued to be disciplined for stuff they will post online and that the lower courts will disagree again and at some point, the Supreme Court will be invited to come back,” says Rosen.
B.L case is hardly the only high-level debate on freedom of expression and social media. But that has the distinction of being one of the rare cases where the first amendment applies to social media. “A lot of online speeches are not covered by the first amendment,” said Rosen. “Private companies themselves are not required to respect the first amendment.” This case was an exception because it involved a public school, which was “as an arm of the state”, as the Alito Justice wrote.
But most of us can not claim that what we are saying about social media is protected by the first amendment, despite what some politicians claim. As private companies, Facebook and YouTube and Snapchat and Twitter are free to define their own rules around the moderation of the content. And major issues on, for example, what a president may or can not say about social media, will save the regulations of the Congress – be left to the platforms themselves or groups created by the industry as The Supervisory Board.