In an era of exciting new technology that empowers us to cast our speech far and wide, what speech can we expect to be constitutionally protected? Two Pennsylvania schools want to punish students represented by the ACLU of PA for vulgar speech that mocked school officials. When I saw the headline, I wondered where the speech was disseminated. Reasonably, if a student stands up in the middle of math class and mocks the teacher, a student can be punished. Yes, students have first amendment rights, but they also have a right to an education. The courts have repeatedly found that speech that interrupts learning during the school day is not necessarily protected speech - not because the speech is wrong but because education is sacred.
What if the mocking in question happened amongst friends in a student's bedroom in the evening. Can the school really suspend the student for this use of speech?
If it happens on the internet on a site like MySpace, at least one court says yes and another says no.
The students involved in the Pennsylvania cases were suspended for creating fake, vulgar profiles for school officials on a social networking site. Both cases were decided on the same day in February, one in favor of the student and one in favor of the school. A panel of 14 judges from the Third Circuit will try to reconcile these conflicting decisions.
Hopefully the courts will recognize that just because our private realm diminishes as the internet and its possibilities grow, our constitutional rights do not have to diminish too. The ACLU of Northern California has been working to strike this balance with a "Demand Your Dot Rights" campaign. Check out their incredibly informative website and learn more about your dot rights everywhere from the post office to your travel agent to the library: http://www.dotrights.org/.