What It is and what it isn’t

 What it is and what it isn’t 

The Supreme Court has ruled that the trash talking spoiled 14-year old was within her free speech rights when she fired the F word at her school, her team and her teammates.  The Court does not rule on character.  The child said in court that that was how 14-year olds talked.  If that is true, there are a whole lot of parenting issues that need to be taught.  

There are really two separate issues at play.

The most obvious is the one of free speech.  While the Court unanimously agreed in both the official decision and the dissenting opinion, the student’s language was inappropriate.   So the decision boiled down to two things, did she have a Constitutional right to be inappropriate and, secondly, did the school have the right to provide consequences for inappropriate speech off-campus.   The answer to the first question is yes she did have a Constitutional right to behave without character and the school could not punish her for that flaw.

Now where does that leave schools in terms of providing consequences for profanity and/or other flawed speech.

In the past, whether the “speech” took the form of t-shirts or spoken words, the Court has ruled that schools may intervene and limit any speech that is disruptive to the operation of the school.  And this decision does not change that authority .   Had the online speech threatened a student or a staff member it would have been a different decision.  Instead the words were stated online and outside of the school building and they were generalized to entities not specific individuals. 

We are left with 14-year olds essentially having the same rights as others to expose their lack of character and self-entitlement online.  

However, statements that negatively target kids or staff in a manner that is racist, sexist or any other form of bullying are still up for consequences.  These statements are disruptive to the operation of the school and can be regulated.  

One can hope that the 14-year old who is now 18 has gained some maturity in the intervening years.  But then again, there are lots of middle aged folks and older who seem to be stuck in adolescence.