Cheerleader’s Snapchat rant leads to ‘momentous’ Supreme Court case on speech | Hacker News Reader

Cheerleader’s Snapchat rant leads to ‘momentous’ Supreme Court case on speech

washingtonpost.com

220 pointspseudolus450 comments

For those who can't read the article, here's a summary:

> Brandi Levy sent a profanity-laden post to her friends on Snapchat in 2017, venting her frustrations with cheerleading and her school. When coaches at the Pennsylvania school discovered the post, she was barred from the squad for a year. The case will determine whether schools have the right to punish pupils for what they say off-campus. It is being viewed as a major test of the US Constitution's First Amendment, which protects free speech rights.

As for my own thoughts... I'm hoping the outcome of this case can be used as a litmus test for related bannings/cancellations when people express an opinion "off-campus" (so to speak).

Edit: More info about the case here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahanoy_Area_School_District_v....

Edit2: Looks like HN can't handle URLs that end with a period. Clicking the link above won't work; you have to manually terminate it with a period before loading (should end with "B.L.", not "B.L")

Thank you for the summary! I was just going to ask...

> I’m hoping the outcome of this case can be used as a litmus test for related bannings/cancellations when people express an opinion “off-campus”

Additionally, I hope this can also apply to the workplace.

Private companies are not subject to the first amendment.

Is being on the cheerleading squad a natural right?

It's a qualified right, which she qualified for. A state actor doesn't get to dictate acceptable speech outside of that activity.

So it's fine for a police officer to attend klan events on the weekend?

The analogy would be the officer (the state actor) refusing service to someone who exercised objectionable speech.

Should a police officer be fired, if they express views prejudicial to people that belong to minorities they are meant to serve, even if they express these views while off-duty?

Don't you think you're walking a bit of an edge there, minimising racism by equating it with criticism of an organisation? I hope you're aware the history of it isn't something that should be trivialised?

This case would be argued along exactly the same lines before the court had the student in question thrown in a racial slur. It will also have an impact on the ability for schools to punish students for racist cyberbullying in future. So I don't think it's problematic in the slightest to bring race into the equation.

One is criticism of the running and operation of an organisation; the other is steeped in the history of genocide and slavery, there are even laws in place around the world to protect people from it because of it's heinousness. But you're professing that advocacy of racism is no more malignant than basic complaints about a company?

I'm not sure if what you're advocating is because of perhaps missing education on the subject but this is a serious hot button issue at the moment; I'm honestly surprised you'd espouse this so freely.

An unreformed racist sprouting out bigotry and a teenage girl having a bit of a moan about the cheerleading squad are both protected forms of speech under the first amendment.

If the Supreme Court made an exceptionally broad ruling to the effect of forbidding any organ of the state revoking an appointment on the basis of first amendment protected speech uttered while not performing duties, then the ruling would protect a racist police officer and irate cheerleader equally.

The Supreme Court is, of course, very unlikely to make such a broad ruling in this case, but it does seem like that's the remedy which quite a few people in this thread would like to see decided.

As a matter of their employment agreement, sure.

I guess students sign behavior pledges or similar, but I'm more inclined to enforce an employment agreement against an adult than I am to give local school administrators complete control over what activities students they disapprove of participate in.

I believe as public employees, they should be held to at least the same standard as people in private employment. If I, as the employee of a company, make a Facebook post outside of work denigrating a group of people and my employer is made aware of that, I believe that I can be terminated. Should termination be the only solution? I don't think so. In a functioning society, there must be room for genuine contrition and redemption of those who have erred. I don't know what the proper method of addressing it should be, however.. The removal of the offensive speech and an immediate and heartfelt apology would be a firm minimum IMHO. The same should be true for public employees with the difference being that the appearance of impropriety should weigh towards sanctions. In both cases, pending conflict with employment contracts or local law, suspension, re-training, and demotions are all possible alternative sanctions.

Yes it is unless you label the clan as a terrorist org. But yeah that’s the kind of edge case you have to allow for in order to have freedom. Cause today it’s a clan rally but tomorrow it could easily be a BLM rally and the state has historically been more harsh on BLM rallys.

Why should we limit your rule to comments made off duty? Why can't a police officer shout racial slurs from a bull horn while driving down the street in their cruiser?

> Yes it is unless you label the clan as a terrorist org

The fact the Klan is not labeled as one is deeply shocking.

"The Klan" has no relevance these days, and is used as a boogey man more than anything else.

This is a common practice in media and politics. There are more "Klan" members than there are anarchists, yet supposedly those anarchists burned down every urban business in the nation last summer.

Nope. Certain professions that serve the public require professionalism on and off the record. Policing is one of those. A police officer who vents racist speech in a private chat should reconsider their calling.

Cheerleaders? They are welcome to go to the Klan BBQ and liven up the proceedings within the limits of the law; like the rest of us.

It's not just that it was expressed off campus. It was expressed privately. Her speech on its own never reached the school. It was deliberately recorded and rebroadcast. The disruptive speech was the replaying of what she said, not her saying it. There is a huge difference.

If everything private is fair game, then I expect we should be able to depose all parties involved for any disparaging statements they have ever made. Then we can proceed with either cancelling the large majority of everyone, and prosecuting the rest for perjury. I suppose there is as third group who just don't say anything at all, and we should just go ahead and nail them for thoughtcrime.

Sure, there is a blurred line with posting something on a forum which is read in school, but this case clearly isn't that. The speech wasn't public and wasn't available at large.

> I suppose there is as third group who just don't say anything at all, and we should just go ahead and nail them for thoughtcrime.

“Silence is violence”

No, it isn't.

Scenario 1) someone who has bullied you in the past calls classmate a racist term. you stay silent for reasonable fear of reprisals.

Scenario 2) your boss says something overtly sexist. you know he is fairly temperamental, so stay silent because you want to keep your job so as to continue paying your bills.

Scenario 3) the government is jailing a certain ideological group you happen to somewhat agree with. you stay silent for fear of being included in that group and leaving your children parentless.

Do any of those sound like violence? Or do they sound like a reasonable course of action for an individual lacking power over the perpetrators?

I understand the instinct to condemn silence in the face of injustice. But the real world places real demands on people, some of which are more important than abstract notions of justice.

I wasn't declaring that silence is violence. I was providing it as an example for the OP's enumeration. Hence the quotes.

noted, thanks for clarifying.

I think its perfectly fine to shun people if you think they're awful. Continuing association with someone who is, for example, is supportive of ethnic cleansing, is expressing that you condone those things. Choosing not to decide is still a choice.

The question at hand is whether you believe isolated private communications to be representative of true nature.

I don’t think that’s true. If you visit a convicted rapist in prison when nobody else will do you condone rape? Or are you performing an act of kindness?

I think the ironic and not obvious answer here is that we stop committing people to the garbage heap of humanity via religious-like shunning. That reaction is what gives bad ideas power.

People are complicated. You can’t boil them down to a true nature that is “good” or “bad”. That’s “us vs them”. Only ideas can be judged that way and history decides what the bad ideas are.

" Only ideas can be judged that way and history decides what the bad ideas are." Well, historians do. Subject to change.

Accurate.

Although I suppose I was referring to "history is written by the victor". America is a great nation, but had the revolution failed, it would have been a disgraceful insurrection instead.

Honestly, it wouldn't even be that much. It would be a trivia question.

Even now the American revolution is kind of a non-event to the British. It is of less interest to them than the French revolution, which led to the Napoleonic wars and ultimately the rather drastic reshaping of European nations. George III is the villain in the American version of the story, but he's mostly known in the UK for his long, sad descent into madness.

They had their own Civil War in the 17th century, and even that tends to be glossed over in British history classes. They've just got so much more history than Americans do that it's just unfathomable. They don't really spare a lot of thought for the successful revolution, and an unsuccessful one would have been a footnote.

Visiting a criminal in prison does not condone their crime. Associating with someone that commits crimes, while turning a blind eye to their criminal behavior, does condone their crimes.

What do you mean by "stop committing people to the garbage heap of humanity via religious-like shunning"? Do you have a social group in mind that does not enforce its own social norms?

> Visiting a criminal in prison does not condone their crime. Associating with someone that commits crimes, while turning a blind eye to their criminal behavior, does condone their crimes.

To me, this does not seem logical (for the dictionary definition of "condone"). Would you mind explaining your reasoning?

This was related to the parent comment that asked, rhetorically, if visiting an incarcerated rapist meant that you condoned rape.

I was pointing out that visiting a criminal does not directly imply that you condoned the actions that landed them in prison. However, if you know someone that is committing crimes, and you do nothing to stop them, then you do condone their behavior. I hope that clears it up?

Everyone enforces norms some way or another, but their statement implies an unwillingness to forgive transgressions, which isn't a given. Nowadays people's mistakes quite easily become viral memes that are their legacy. Huge mobs of shallowly interested detractors are unforgiving and can cause disproportionate harm.

I don't think you have to "turn a blind eye". It's not a zero-sum game. But it does mean you have to engage with people. Shunning would be the opposite of that.

The best modern-day example of how we should all live is probably Daryl Davis...

"It's when the talking ceases that the ground becomes fertile for violence. If you spend five minutes with your worst enemy — it doesn't have to be about race, it could be about anything...you will find that you both have something in common."

https://www.npr.org/2017/08/20/544861933/how-one-man-convinc...

I think what you're trying to say is that compassion is a more effective tool for bringing people back into the fold of widely accepted facts and norms, and you offer Daryl Davis as an example.

I hear what you're saying, but I think Daryl Davis is an inexplicable exception, not the rule. I think most people know someone that has held onto truly shocking beliefs for decades, and hasn't responded to reason or compassion.

No solution is perfect, but I can't doubt that the world would be a better place if more people tried a little compassion and outreach first instead of going straight to assuming the worst and shunning.

> bringing people back into the fold of widely accepted facts and norms

> held onto truly shocking beliefs

Can you see the extreme subjectivity in your comments? Why should your opinion of what's a norm or shocking be the ultimate judge? What if its your ideas which are actually shocking and violate the norms? For example, you should believe in a god because that's normal and if you're an exception, you need to be brought back into the fold of believers.

Okay, believing (without evidence) that high ranking Democrats, [sic] globalist Jews, celebrities, and coastal elites are eating aborted babies and performing satanic rituals involving pedophilia and human sacrifice is a truly shocking belief.

I'm okay with being extremely subjective and saying that's actually shocking. Claims that strong should be accompanied by at least circumstantial evidence. If you don't believe this is a real world view that people are trying to spread, look up Q-Anon.

I don't doubt that you find those beliefs shocking. But why do you see it as a given that they should be changed? You probably hold beliefs that others find shocking and would like to persuade you out of. Are you willing to be changed by them too? Even if "them" is, say, Islamic fundamentalists? Maybe it's OK that different people have different beliefs and you should be no more frustrated in your inability to change them than they are at their inability to change you.

There is obviously a balance to be struck here and I don't think we yet have a great framework for thinking about such problems. A lot of what makes a nice society is social norms and conventions. The group must have a way of punishing bad behavior or that system falls apart.

If there are no consequences for "acting like a Karen" what is the social incentive to stop behaving like an angry toddler anytime you don't get your way? Now extend this to even more extreme behavior like people who say you should be killed just for existing because you're an abomination. Is the argument that we should just get along and there shouldn't be any social consequences for that? Such a view would be incredibly naive at best.

On the flip side clearly people's views do sometimes change, people make mistakes, etc. Changing minds and hearts is a process, not a one-time event, so complete shunning for any perceived slight is rather extreme and can be counterproductive.

> A lot of what makes a nice society is social norms and conventions. The group must have a way of punishing bad behavior or that system falls apart.

Yes. But it's a problem when different cultures coexist and see each other's good behavior as bad. Societies that kill their "abominations" are also enforcing their social norms. And they may even be right to do so given the environment they live in and their desire to continue existing as a society. Modern western culture has the luxury of being very tolerant of diverse types of people because we're so wealthy and safe, but many societies or their members are closer to the brink and the presence of too many ineffective or counter-productive members is an existential threat.

Interestingly, the most common use of Karen I have seen is women being assertive and actually right.

Yes, sometimes it is in racist or exaggerating context. But, most often, Karen is used to shut up woman who don't want to be doormat or is telling you off for good reason.

You can respectfully communicate your feelings about somebody without being horrible and hurting people or losing control and getting laughed at. It's not easy but women shouldn't aspire to be bitches because they might succeed and then everyone suffers.

The goal of those encounters is not to communicate feelings. Typically, people you are interacting with don't care about them and nuanced explanation won't change anything.

The goal is and as when men do the same - make them stop or at least minimize. Or vent frustration, sometimes.

Respectfully communicating feelings about somebody being horrible and hurting people rarely achieves anything. Cause horrible people hurting people don't care about your feelings.

You might be talking about something different. I'm thinking of the stereotypical Karen who's angry at the shop assistant because of some pricing or stocking mistake made by somebody else. If your Karen is standing up for a victim of bullying, that's not really what Karen commonly means, I don't think.

> we stop committing people to the garbage heap of humanity via religious-like shunning

There’s also religious-like forgiveness too. Some incredible acts of forgiveness were accomplished by very religious people. Pope John Paul II immediately forgave the person who almost killed him.

Now you're conflating a crime that was committed vs. an uncovered privately held belief. Visiting a repentant criminal doesn't condone their crime, obviously.

Visiting a rapist who speaks freely, or privately just to you, about how much he enjoys rape certainly begs the question of why you're doing what you're doing.

Employing such a person who says these things speaks volumes about your concern for the feelings of people who feel threatened or have suffered sexual assault in the past, especially on your team.

All of this boils down to how much legitimacy we're willing to offer people based on what we know about them. If you want to offer the worst of the worst people just enough legitimacy to have a human conversation once in a while, I think that's defensible. If you think one's reputation doesn't have massive reprecussions on which social groups you welcome them into I think you're naive.

> Continuing association with someone who is, for example, is supportive of ethnic cleansing, is expressing that you condone those things

I disagree. Why should associating with someone automatically mean you condone all of their beliefs/actions? You can disagree with parts you disagree with. Otherwise that's like a religious person saying they have to shun all democrats, because to associate with them is to condone abortion.

worse. if you can't associate with such people, then you can't work to change their mind either. i remember a story about someone who made friends with kkk members, and one by one managed to turn them away from the kkk. that probably took some time for each person, during which he had to have been seen associating with them.

As a control, how many people left the KKK without knowing him?

It doesn’t matter. Guilt by association implies you can’t even attempt the idea, regardless of success rate. It’s very strictly an us vs. them heuristic, with little to no room for nuance.

As a control for what, exactly?

The assertion is that his friend's acquaintance with KKK members was effective at helping them leave. But we can't tell how effective unless we know how many people would have left without the friend's assistance.

Reread what they said; it's not their friend and he made no claims to efficacy. Your response seems off-context.

You're correct: it wasn't their friend, it was something they read.

It does sound like they're making a claim to efficacy. It says "one by one managed to turn them away". That's the part I'm asking for clarification on.

The anecdote about Daryl Davis is the preamble, the last sentence is their point.

I'm not saying that's not a valid point of conversation, I'm saying it comes across as off-context to the point where it seems a little like bait.

How many people left the KKK without ever associating with people outside of it before?

i remember a story about someone who made friends with kkk members, and one by one managed to turn them away from the kkk

Daryl Davis: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daryl_Davis

Sounds like Daryl Davis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6FDQ301Q7s

Why change their mind? You can also let them change your mind. Just because you disagree doesn't mean you're right and they're wrong. For these big ethical and moral issues, people are often completely certain their view is right but they can't explain why. The reason is probably because their society tells them they'll be a bad person (at risk of being shunned!) for thinking otherwise. Strong social punishment for holding a belief isn't a good reason that belief is wrong.

You can also let them change your mind

only if they are able to convince me, but even if they are completely certain their view is right but they can't explain why, then they will not be able to do that. if you want to change someones mind you need to understand and be able to explain why they are wrong.

However, he did not managed to endanger KKK power one bit.

And way more people who socialize in KKK circles end up naturally moving toward racism and extremes of it. They change toward racism, because that is what choose to hear most of time.

It so happens that these are quite aggressive when voice disagreements with them, so socialising with the requires you to pretend you agree, at least on the edges. It works like any other bubble overtime, the anti-racists become crazy ennemies.

that is a rather defeatist attitude. just because one person won't have much effect at changing a large group of people, doesn't mean their effort is worthless. (besides, it is also not correct that he didn't manage to change anything. read the above linked wikipedia page. he dismantled the kkk in one state. when a new leader emerged, he converted that person too. if a few more people do that all over the US, keep it up for a generation or two, the kkk could be gone)

there is also quite a difference between people who socialize in kkk circles, and those who befriend individuals with the intent of changing their mind. the latter, for certain will not only socialize in kkk circles but also in other circles where they get the necessary grounding for their work to change those people.

i understand your point. from your perspective it makes sense. but i think you are missing something. pretending to agree does not make me believe what i pretend to. but i also think that pretending is not needed here, but rather it's important to empathize with my opponent, and then gently educate them to point out the flaws in their argument.

if i am working with someone to educate them and change their mind, then i am not joining their bubble. i am not giving up on my other circles either. rather i am breaking out of my bubble, and i help others break out of theirs. i end up with a better understanding of why they have their beliefs, and they hopefully get a better understanding why they might be wrong. we both gain something.

Looking into history to see what worked and what did not worked is not "defeatist". It is absurd however to take one outlier and then talk about it as if this was the way social issue were solved - ever. Sometimes it works on individual level, but acting like this is how things gets changed, no.

> pretending to agree does not make me believe what i pretend to.

It somewhat does. More importantly, as you pretend you agree, the people who happen to disagree will slowly move themselves out from your company, because listening to you agreeing is uncomfortable for them. And they get better treatment elsewhere.

Also the pull of extreme groups is not just rational where you point out flaws in thinking and logic will do rest. There is strong social (strong bonds to other extremeists) component and strong emotional component (it feels good to be superior, it feels good to see yourself as protector of race - a hero).

i may simply be unaware of this, but what other attempts have been made to solve this and other social issues?

as far as i can tell, also from personal experience, education and friendship are the only ways to solve social issues that actually have a lasting effect.

as you pretend you agree, the people who happen to disagree will slowly move themselves out

possible, but as i said, pretending is not actually part of the strategy. you don't pretend, you empathize, but that doesn't mean you agree or even pretend to agree.

There is strong social component

which is broken by your friendship. you show that they can find better friends, and you are one of them.

That's irrelevant: this is a social issue not a legal or technological one. "Associating" is covering an awfully broad amount of ground there.

If you employ jack and jill, and jack tells jill he wants her to be killed, your relationship with jack is not isolated. The way you treat jack signals whether you think it is important that jack hates jill. If you go grab a beer with jack and hang out on weekends, that sends a strong message. If you do nothing, that means its ok for jack to think jill should die and jill can fuck off. If you fire jack, you've sent a strong message in the other direction.

This doesn't materially change if instead everyone finds out jack says these things to randos on a weird forum on weekends, unless jack decides to persuade people that those opinions are not representative of who he is. That would be an entirely different problem.

A religious person who hangs out with pro-choice individuals is condoning that its ok to be pro choice. That's not the same thing as saying pro choice is the right ideology, but that it is a tolerable difference of opinion. It's basically tautological. If you refuse to accept pro-choice individuals and then hang out with them, you're just an inconsistent person.

If you share employment with someone with a different religious background and that really bothers you, but you remain employed, you're ultimately deciding that being employed is more important to you than the virtue of your religious objections.

No amount of politicalization will erase the fact that social reputation is an important part of how humans socialize.

If you refuse to accept pro-choice individuals and then hang out with them, you're just an inconsistent person

you seem to suggest that disagreeing with an opinion requires me to reject the person as a whole. but that is wrong. i can, even must accept you as a person, even if i violently disagree with your opinions. if i don't then it would be impossible for us to have any dialogue, and for me to learn and understand why you have this opinion, and also for you to learn and understand mine.

this idea that i must not associate with people who i disagree with is a core problem. we must get away from that otherwise we won't ever be able to resolve our differences.

virtue of your religious objections

there is no virtue in objecting to someone elses religion. that's just pure intolerance, which is something that needs to be eliminated.

> you seem to suggest that disagreeing with an opinion requires me to reject the person as a whole.

That's not what I said. The difference is whether you see an difference of opinion or something that is so ideologically different that you can not tolerate their opinion.

> there is no virtue in objecting to someone elses religion. that's just pure intolerance, which is something that needs to be eliminated.

And social ostracization of aggressive, intolerable groups is an effective strategy

so ideologically different that you can not tolerate their opinion

that still doesn't require me to stay away from them. if there is an opinion so bad that it actually is intolerable, (which the kkk obviously represents) then it is on us to do something about it. none of that affects whether i ought to socialize with these people or not. it only affects why. if my goal is to change them then i should be allowed to do that.

social ostracization of aggressive, intolerable groups is an effective strategy

effective to do what? to change their mind? i'd like to see some evidence for that, because i don't believe it. ostracization only strengthens people in their opinions. it may make then unable to spread their ideas, but it doesn't help them change.

ostracization also can end up hurting the wrong people. those who want to get out but can't because they don't have anyone helping them. it causes people who are actually unsure get stuck because they have noone showing them that there is another way. it causes people who realize that they are wrong being unable to get out because they have to fear to end up being completely isolated. they don't know that there will be others who welcome them. for all they know they have to expect to remain shunned because they are afraid could not convince anyone that they changed. (this is made even worse by todays climate of ostracizing people for things they said years ago. you said something racist on twitter once, and noone will ever believe that you learned your lesson for the rest of your life)

changing your opinion and then finding new friends looks easy from the outside, but very risky from the inside. finding new friends, and then have those friends help you get out is the only way.

it's up to us to be those friends.

a problem here is also who decides who ought to be ostracized. i should have the right to associate with whoever i want. it's not anyone's place to decide whether i am capable of avoiding to get influenced by those people or not.

if you are a close friend who knows me well, you may be able to tell if these people are getting to me or not and you can tell me, or help me avoid that influence. if you aren't already a friend, then your only option is to become my friend and find out. and if necessary help me understand that these people are influencing me. but if you ostracize me because i am not doing what you think i should, then you will achieve the opposite of what you set out to do.

you see, it's friends all the way down. and all the way up. the only way to change the world, is to change its people, one person at a time.

ostracization leads to disunity, and disunity leads to war. the well-being of the worlds society, its peace and security can not be achieved if we keep ostracizing each other.

> that still doesn't require me to stay away from them. if there is an opinion so bad that it actually is intolerable, (which the kkk obviously represents) then it is on us to do something about it. none of that affects whether i ought to socialize with these people or not. it only affects why. if my goal is to change them then i should be allowed to do that.

That's up to you then. Shunning occurs on various levels.

If you want to talk to someone in the KKK to discuss the merits of their opinions, be my guest. If you want to employ KKK members, I'm leaving your team. If I'm your manager, I might even fire you for making such a boneheaded decision.

Giving everyone legitimacy is a childish idea easily abused by bad faith actors.

i don't know how you connect talking to someone with hiring them. those are entirely different actions.

i might hire them after they renounce their kkk membership. are you ok with that?

where i am from, discrimination based on political opinions is illegal. on the other hand, political activism by employees is also not allowed. so i probably could hire someone who is not already known for their kkk membership, and you would not be allowed to fire me for that. they are allowed to stay as long as they are not becoming active. that scenario is unlikely to happen though because hiring friends is considered a form of corruption and strongly frowned upon. qualifications only.

but let's be clear. i am not giving someone legitimacy just by talking to them.

You are conflating your individual right to hang out with who you please with that of an institution like a school or company.

Nobody would disagree with the individual right.

Nobody should be banned, hands down, from working at a company, generically (that is. legally unemployable). But companies are run by people. And people make decisions about who is allowed to work in their company specifically. It's nonsense to suggest that managers of companies cannot factor reputation into their consideration of the pros and cons of having a person in their employment.

I would fire someone in a heartbeat if I heard they were a self identifying Neo Nazi or klansman, and they affirmed this when confronted. I don't want to work with nazis. I don't want my team to have to work with nazis. I don't want people to think I work at a company that knowingly employs nazis.

The converse is you need to offer a way for people to change. The point of social pressures like this is to get people to stop being the worst. We say "echo chamber" like its unilaterally bad, because in america 'muh freedom' means whatever the individual wants is what the individual is entitled to preach. But honestly there's a lot of basic social norms that are healthy to enforce, without embedding it in legal code.

There's also the question of how to reform people who misbehave and whether shunning is appropriate or effective for that purpose.

Have you ever watched The King and I? The original

"If everything private is fair game, then I expect we should be able to depose all parties involved for any disparaging statements they have ever made. Then we can proceed with either cancelling the large majority of everyone, and prosecuting the rest for perjury."

Worked for O.J. when his attorneys questioned Mark Fuhrman. Probably had a substantial impact on the jury verdict.

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2016/03/people-v-oj-sim...

I thought the "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" supreme court case [1] established the school's ability to punish views expressed off campus. So, is this just down to whether her intent was that the message was to be private? The distinction between public and private speech is already fuzzy on these hosted chat platforms, and some would argue is disappearing. The difference between a public and private message in a forum or social media platform might just be a single bit in a database. Ignoring the technicalities of end-to-end encryption, at the end of the day, you're sending your message to a 3rd party company, and that company decides ultimately whether it is public or private. As much as I'd like to see more first amendment protections for school students, I don't think this case is going to be decided in favor of the girl.

1: https://www.uscourts.gov/educational-resources/educational-a...

I think the key is that [1] was part of an off campus school supervised activity.

> It was expressed privately

That's immaterial. The teams rules prohibited any statements of that nature, in private or public.

The real question is whether such a rule is enforceable. If not, then every rule would have a limited scope. The article gives some examples of problems this would cause, e.g., sharing test answers, bullying, harassment.

If the rules only apply while on school property or in public, then why even have rules? The student can just flaunt the rules and claim "privacy" when challenged.

Of course every rule should have a limited scope. Institutions absolutely should not be allowed to have any say about what you do outside of their actual purview (ie: off of their property, not during work hours, while not representing them, etc).

Almost any way that Institutions have to detect rule breaking outside of their purview involves serious privacy breaches.

It's amusing to think that, if she had said it with her boob out, she likely would not have been punished by the school, because nobody would have saved and rebroadcast it for an adult.

This case will be irrelevant to workplace firings. It's the specific situation of children in schools having fewer rights than adults in the workplace that's the issue here. Some courts have already ruled that kids don't enjoy a full separation between school and personal lives because what they do at home can be disruptive at school, and this ruling is expected to address that specific line of thinking.

And really, any grown adult who says the same things about their employer that Levy did about her school should expect to find themselves unemployed as soon as word gets back. I don't mean that to diss Levy, who was a kid at the time, and besides, what kids don't privately rant to their friends about school? It's neither appropriate nor desirable for a school to say "you don't like it, then quit" to a child, whereas it's reasonable for most work settings to fire a disgruntled employee.

Strongly disagreeing. Which of us has not privately cursed their job at some point in frustration? The consequences for letting fly some profanity privately as an expression of human emotion cannot be so high in any reasonable civilization.

How’s it any different from writing a letter to 25 coworkers saying F** my employer? If one of the 25 recipients showed the letter to my employer I’d be fired.

How’s a private snap any different than a private letter?

The employer is not bound by the 1st Amendment. Whereas the school (functioning as a part of the government) is.

Communicating with coworkers about workplace conditions could be a protected labor activity.

What would/should actually happen in this case is HR/the manager would meet with the employee and ask them to vent any apparent frustrations. If the statement was made publicly, they would probably be fired outright for making public statements about the employer without permission. If it's only internal, they wouldn't be fired outright, but they will likely be passed over for promotion. Makes sense, why should a company invest in someone who apparently isn't invested in the company? If they are ever fired, the reason given would be for some other unrelated infraction that they are legally allowed to terminate for.

Protected labor activities are protected in the US by Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act, not by the Constitution.

I believe that I have not made my point clearly: simply, you should not be fired for that letter.

The snap self-destructs. The correct analogy would be showing a photo of the letter to others.

The by-default ephemeral nature?

The difference is, one is a private company that you are gainfully employed at of your own volition. The other is a public school that students are legally obligated to attend. The two have nothing to do with each other.

> How’s a private snap any different than a private letter?

I thought that letters had a copyright? The recipient has ownership but cannot publish. If they do copy and distribute (as a screenshot of a Snapchat message) does this not break copyright?

Edit: In New Zealand (where I am), an employer screenshooting and distributed an employee’s Facebook messages breached privacy laws. https://privacy.org.nz/tools/knowledge-base/view/366

Copyright generally doesn't protect usage of a work in criticism of it, even if it is basically verbatim usage without added commentary. I think Hughes v. Benjamin is salient here.

I don't completely disagree with you, FWIW. I do see it as fundamentally different to gripe about your job to a coworker in your living room or at a bar after work. That's the most natural thing ever. It's a different animal to make a public post telling the world that your company sucks and f- the company and your boss.

In Levy's case, she made a public post (even if she didn't mean for it to be public). And to be clear, I'm not going to judge a 14 year old for doing things that I'd be annoyed with a 30 year old for doing. A kid got frustrated with her school and complained about it? Ooh, stop the presses and clutch some pearls! I have a much harder time sympathizing with people twice her age who complain publicly about how much their job sucks, then complain that their boss has relieved them of the burden of ongoing employment.

I've always thought of Snapchat as "hanging out on your back porch with a beer". On the other hand, I've never sent any Snaps to more than like... 3 people. Sending it to 250 is a bit like hosting the entire class from your school at a party, and then getting on a microphone and saying "F--- all of you and f--- cheer!" and then someone recording that on their phone and showing a coach.

I don't think it's fair to call her action "making a public post" because she did not make it public. Someone else did.

It's the other way around. Public schools have more obligations than private employers. That a school is obligated to provide the cheerleading experience to a student they "don't approve of" doesn't imply that an employer is obligated to provide employment to anybody, whether they approve of them or not.

I agree with you on general principles. However, the whole point of this case being in front of SCOTUS is that other courts have ruled that schools aren't obligated to provide that experience. Levy's suing because she disagrees (and I do too).

I think she should be allowed to be a cheerleader even after complaining about her coach and school, as kids are wont to do. Now we'll find out if the courts see it the same way.

I predict the SCOTUS will see cheerleading as an extra-curricular activity outside of the scope for which a public school is obligated to provide and thus may restrict access to that activity in any manner they see fit. If they don't rule it that way then SCOTUS is about to open One Giant Can of Worms.

It would already be subject to Title 9, they have to provide equal access.

The school can certainly argue that all students have to meet the same requirements to participate, which would hinge on whether the student could reasonably anticipate the consequences here (an example where that isn't possible is if the school created and applied a policy for the incident).

My first comment is in response to the people inventing parallels that don't exist at all because schools and work places are very different things and wasn't an attempt to thoroughly examine the specifics. A finding that the existing obligations of the school do apply to this situation is irrelevant to at will employment.

> in any manner they see fit.

That cannot possibly be true. Here is an example. Imagine if a school banned people from sports, because they expressed support for Obama or Trump.

Clearly that would be a government infringing on people's right to speech, as it is expressely political.

Or imagine that a school gave certain benefits, only to students, who publicly support a certain political candidate. If you don't support their choice of president, you lose privileges or benefits or get expelled.

Or, if we are truly talking about "any manner they see fit", an obvious counter example would be if they just banned women from playing sports.

> is about to open One Giant Can of Worms.

There is no can of worms being opened here. A school is a public institution. How speech laws apply to public institution is not some crazy out there idea. It is well established.

I am not sure why people are making out speech laws, which have a long history of how they apply to public institutions, as some sort of alien topic.

You wouldn't say that a school could expel people, for example, for this kind of speech, out of school. Why is it so crazy, for this to be applied to other activities?

> A school is a public institution. How speech laws apply to public institution is not some crazy out there idea. It is well established.

Free speech laws apply differently in school. They're not exactly the same as other public institutions, as SCOTUS has ruled numerous times.

Bethel v. Fraser[0] is an example where the Court ruled pretty clearly that the school can go as far as to prohibit sexual innuendo, it doesn't even have to be obscene or vulgar.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bethel_School_District_v._Fras...

> They're not exactly the same as other public institutions, as SCOTUS has ruled numerous times.

I didn't say that they were exactly the same. Instead I am saying that there is not some "huge can of worms" that is opened on up this topic, if the supreme court rules in favor of the student in this case.

It is instead something that predictably might happen, and which will have predicable results that are in line with how things work in other examples.

So, in other words, the sky will not fall, and schools will not collapse under the weight of not being allowed to punish students for purely off campus speech.

Schools sort of fall in an area between private employer and government entity. They have to allow more leeway than a private employer (they can't prevent speech just because it makes them uncomfortable) but they can put more limits on speech than the government normally would be allowed (in the interest of the educational mission).

I guess this case is about whether cheerleading falls into the former or latter category.

she didn't say them about 'her school' though, she expressed the sentiment of 'fuck school' which is pretty much as vague and general as possible. should your employer have grounds to fire you if you, in a private conversation, express dissatisfaction with the concept of 'work'?

This is a lot different than being "canceled". The school must abide by policies and incorporate student's right to free speech, access to education, and equitable access to related school services and programs (including cheerleading).

Being "canceled" is a choice that private individuals and institutions make to not associate themselves with speech, actions, or views they find either objectionable or simply damaging to their brand and business goals. This is entirely a social phenomena and has no legal basis. People legally can and will fire/hire people as it serves my business goals even if you think it is lame. There is no 1st amendment violation here.

Conflating these things is a favorite straw man of people who simply feel scared and angry that they don't always get to be jerks with zero social or career implications (try going around saying you are a satanist and see how that affects your career, this isn't a new thing, just people are whining about it more loudly lately). They are very much not the same.

The first thing I always look for is if I can find some level of discretionary public funding that ties the organization to being a public institution.

Or at least creates funding consequences for them if they try to act like a private organization that actually has rights like a private citizen.

specifically, when an organization tries to "cancel" someone, it makes me wonder if they are

A) able to, or if they must tolerate basically any level of speech

B) able to have their own funding consequences by losing government funds if they choose to regulate speech

> some level of discretionary public funding

That's going to be everything.

Is there a categorical difference between, say UVA, and Harvard? Arguably Harvard takes much more federal funding than UVA.

How about a local dance studio that got $160,000 in federal loans to keep it afloat during COVID pandemic?

Try it in court. Who cares about the hypotheticals or the line? Well I mean, I don't. That's the beauty of it, you don't really need to have strong opinions on anything, just the ability to make an argument that is convenient for you and persuasive to a judge.

The extent of consensus, for me, is understanding what reality can match the arbiters that matter. So I don't really have a fixed world view on much of anything. (sidenote: I'd probably be a decent lawyer, but software earns so much more without any licenses needed.)

> Who cares about the hypotheticals or the line?

Well, for one, anyone administering anything IRL. You're a programmer, so you're not really responsible for much besides your own code. If you were a school principal (or a dance studio runner), knowing where the line exists (or is "liable to exist") BEFORE having to walk into court is important. A legal battle is not as easily ninja'd out as println debugging.

correct its good for the principle to not make kneejerk decisions, and it gives them ammunition against kneejerk parents or a board.

ideally their local counsel knows better too.

the best action in inaction.

all they have to do is do nothing. let the student represent whatever values the student wants in most circumstances.

There is a categorical difference between UVA and Harvard. Harvard competes for federal grants on equal footing with all other research institutions. UVA is a permanent line-item on the Virginia state budget. They are treated as legally distinct for that reason and it means UVA is subject to all the restrictions placed on governments but not private actors and Harvard is not except where a restriction is explicitly written into the conditions of accepting funding (i.e. how the federal government sidesteps state sovereignty to enforce a national drinking age).

> (try going around saying you are a satanist and see how that affects your career, this isn't a new thing, just people are whining about it more loudly lately)

Are we talking Church of Satan or the Satanic Temple here?

Either although mainly from ignorance in the later case. TST is freaking awesome, seriously American heroes. (and hilarious)

Not necessarily.

There are already basic protections in place. For example, it would be expressly illegal for a workplace to fire you for being a satanist.

I don't see a problem with extending such protections to include more free speech. The problem is, where does one draw the line? If one is against abortion and protests that, seems different than say if one is a full fledged neonazi spewing rhetoric.

The way it sits today, the majority of people are afraid to speak their thoughts for fear of workplace retaliation. This is effectively corporate controlled speech, which is not a good thing for society.

> There are already basic protections in place. For example, it would be expressly illegal for a workplace to fire you for being a satanist.

That's not "basic protections", it's existing case law about a conflict within the constitution. Freedom of religion and freedom of association are both protected, but where they conflict we generally find that whichever side is providing some kind of good to the public (be it products or employment) needs to bend. You can't fire me for my religion because of the nature of "firing" (being something that denies me something most people have), not "religion". It can't be extended without stepping on some other right-holder's toes.

Sure, but it's worth considering whether we should care about stepping on the right-holder's toes. That's what got us into corporate controlled speech, doxing, and twitter mobs in the first place. Read, people wouldn't do it if it weren't effective.

It probably wouldn't be -as- bad if in the US healthcare wasn't tied to employment. As it sits today, speaking your mind can literally be a death sentence, if you happen to say something a mob doesn't agree with.

> As it sits today, speaking your mind can literally be a death sentence, if you happen to say something a mob doesn't agree with.

Ridiculous hyperbole. First, because it imagines that people get killed for tweets, and second because it hilariously invokes the idea that this is a new thing. You genuinely don't think people have been persecuted for opinions in the past? Let me get my dead buddy Galileo to drop a few rocks on your head.

Likewise McCarthyism, etc... Objectively free expression of inconvenient conservative ideas in the US has never been cheaper, freer, easier or more pervasive than it is RIGHT NOW. Good grief, just look at your own posts. You don't look like someone afraid of being killed by a mob.

I certainly didn't mean to offend you, or to pretend things today are worse than at any point in the past. It was more an argument against this weird celebration of getting people fired. I mean, there's even a subreddit called ByeByeJob. Just pointing out it's not so simple as 'hur hur he got fired.' Imagine you just found out you got cancer, and had a public meltdown on the way home that someone happened to film. Somewhere people would be laughing at you, while others are trying to get you fired, and poof there goes your health insurance. Crazy world.

That is exactly what happened to gays and lesbians and single moms in conservative places. That is what happens to anyone with history of sex work. There is actual organization right know to collect wrong thing said by liberal professors and to try them get fired.

The abortion clinic volunteers that go with you so that you are not yelled at alone are a thing for a reason.

And in civil rights era, white who did not supported segregation was economically punished and had hard time to find job.

I mean... is what you said advocation to keep this cycle going? That's where whataboutism leads to. Justification to just swing the pendulum the other direction.

I don't agree with any of it happening to either side of the political spectrum. At some point the shit has to stop.

And?

The direction of implication is "people are evil because they do evil actions", not "actions are evil because evil people do them".

Unjustifiedly firing people is wrong, and therefore conservatives are wrong to do so.

Unjustifiedly firing people is wrong, and therefore liberals are wrong to do so.

> As it sits today, speaking your mind can literally be a death sentence, if you happen to say something a mob doesn't agree with.

Exactly, this is a great reason to leave the USA, especially if you already have health issues. With AI taking hold and it getting harder to emigrate, the time to leave is now. Jobs with benefits for programmers are going to become more uncommon, with remote work being possible, as more contract work is going to be offered.

I am a dual US|EU (Croatian) citizen, who is culturally American. I can legally live in about 30 countries (Freedom of Movement rights) as an EU citizen. I left the US over healthcare. For most people on here, Ireland is the place to go to get EU citizenship. Once you get EU citizenship, it levels the playing field and you can go to places with better healthcare than Ireland.

More people migrate from the EU to USA than the reverse. So it seems the majority disagree with you.

https://mises.org/wire/3-times-many-europeans-move-us-other-...

Nah, people escape from the USA all the time. No one moves here. Our border walls are to keep people in, not out. I mean, why else would 2018 and 2019 have record immigration?

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/08/20/key-finding...

https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/frequently-requested...

Look, people should live where they want, be happy and be proud where they're at. Nothing wrong with that. But single platform ideals to make wide sweeping judgements are a good reason to keep a two party political system. Focusing on one issue and bringing a hammer down to shatter everything is rather unproductive. Yea, the USA has it's problems. Duh. Just like everywhere else has problems too. But more people run to the USA. If someone is privileged enough to find somewhere better, good, go for it. No one wants to stop you.

Most Europeans from Western Europe speak English and have at least some cultural knowledge of the U.S. due to our cultural hegemonic status. It’s easier for Greeks to come to the U.S. and integrate than vice versa. Also the U.S. has a long history of taking in immigrants. I suggest that looking solely at respective numbers of immigrants doesn’t tell the whole story.

Wonderful, so how does a natural-born US citizen without a dual citizenship get the right to live and work in Europe?

The only ways I am aware of are having a work sponsor, the Dutch-American friendship treaty, or taking advantage of a country that offers citizenship to descendants of emigres, like Greece

How to immigrate is basically either as a partner of an EU citizen, on a work permit, or descendants of EU citizens.

There's a bunch of resources online to find out. Whether you are a US citizen (natural born or otherwise) tends to be irrelevant.

This portal has a simple way to find out: https://ec.europa.eu/immigration/

I'm super ignorant on this case but has there been a case in which speaking one's mind has caused their death and how was that death actually prosecuted, if it was?

"has there been a case in which speaking one's mind has caused their death"

The case that immediately sprang to mind for me was that of Alan Berg[1], a radio host who was assassinated (and about whom Oliver Stone made a movie called Talk Radio[2]).

But this has happened many times throughout history, where people were assassinated (or imprisoned/executed) for their beliefs.

More modern instances are things like journalists being assassinated in South America, for instance, for reporting on organized crime (similar things happening in Italy), or in Russia for criticizing Putin, or in the Islamic World for incurring the wrath of religious fanatics.. or the Charlie Hedbo attacks in Paris, or various beheadings of journalist and teachers.

Some older, but still relatively recent and famous cases have been the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X, and Gandhi... etc.

Of course, speaking one's mind against the rulers or their system in a totalitarian state like Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union has always been a quick path to the gallows or a concentration/labor/death camp.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Berg

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk_Radio_(film)

Specifically, one cannot be fired for being a satanist because of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The Constitution is completely silent on the interaction of corporations and the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights; those rights describe a relationship between the people and the government. Within that framework, government crafts law that determines how business may legally operate.

Congress made a specific choice to extend (part of) a protection similar to the one described in the First Amendment to employees. It is not a complete extension; for example, at the federal level, freedom of association is not protected regarding one's business relationships, and you can be fired in most states for being a member of the KKK (there are some specific states that have added additional protections for political activities or political beliefs that would preclude such a firing). And most of the rights in the Bill of Rights aren't extended at all to the employer-employee relationship; employers may demand employees (and customers, for that matter) bear no arms on their premises, for example.

Basically, the difference is whether the US government can compel private organizations to give a platform to someone.

The idea of "incorporating" the Bill of Rights against states and cities is a result of the Due Process clause of the 14th amendment. (For example, I wouldn't be surprised if the Heller decision would eventually result in US cities like NYC, SF and LA being unable to require gun licenses anymore, after someone sues them like in MacDonald vs Chicago).

That said, Facebook and Twitter are not publicly owned, they are "private" corporations (which are publicly traded). The problem isn't their specific decisions, but that they are too big.

The Sherman Antitrust act actually gave a lot of teeth to the idea that the public government can break up businesses if they abuse their monopoly power (and supported even by Republican presidents like Teddy Roosevelt). Ma Bell. Standard Oil. Etc. Today, people look at Facebook and Google as targets for breaking them up into competing companies or unbundling their departments from favoring one another.

As a left-libertarian, I would instead like to subsidize open-source software to disrupt these Big Tech monopolies from the ground up. And it's a subtle point, but I would like for the State to simply pass laws explicitly declining to enforce property rights and other rights of entities that "control too much". Landlords who own too many houses, or banks that merge together into large conglomerates will be put on notice that the public system will not enforce their rights against members of the public, past a certain point. It doesn't serve society for private property to have no limits, similarly to how you can't scale up Roman era ships and still have them seaworthy.

I recently gave an interview at Glasgow Caledonian University about the economics of free speech, where I go into detail about the problems and solutions in all the aspects around Capitalism and Free Speech, from money in politics, to deplatforming, to Big Tech filter bubbles, to clickbait news, to the Sinclair television chorus. It contains a lot of critiques of Capitalism and Competition as the basis for free speech.

If anyone has about 30 minutes to listen through it, I would love your feedback: https://youtu.be/M8HbvC6vqIY

This has nothing to do with freedom of speech, and everything to do with workers' rights. You can't be fired for belonging to a protected class, but you can be fired for literally anything else - hence people are still rarely punished for firing members of a protected class.

There was an upheld case a few years ago where a man fired one of his employees for being too sexy. Not acting too sexy, or dressing too sexy, but being too sexy. You can fire someone for wearing Adidas, or for breathing too loudly (unless it can be shown to be the effect of a disability.)

The idea that we should have special rules for racists and sexists is an insult. It would be in effect creating a protected class for bigots, who could still be fired for wearing green on Thursday.

The most absurd part of this is that the vast majority of the people decrying "cancel culture" are the most antagonistic to any normalization of worker's rights, or enforcement of minority protections. Apparently, the only real racism is when you call someone a racist.

Good points all around. Since work is so vital to our everyday survival, and as pointed out, often health insurance, it should be much harder or with much better reason to fire someone than what currently exists today(which, in most states is nothing). I by no means intended to advocate for chiseling out special protections for bigots or antagonists.

I'll admit to a little frustration with people who act like current law (usually the first amendment) protects people from "cancellation" by private actors. But I'm more open to arguments that we should create new employment law that makes it harder to arbitrarily fire people. I don't think this is a good idea, for the record, but it is a reasonable argument to make. Many other countries have much stronger worker protections, which work well for them. I don't personally think they would fit with all the other interlocking policies in the US, but it's definitely not a crazy thing to discuss. But it's also not the case that it's a first amendment issue.

It is crazy the lack of protections around firing people. People fear that it would be harder for businesses to fire someone so they would be less eager to hire. But then you connect any health services to being employed and you created a big hole in the overall plan.

This is why I don't understand why businesses aren't demanding universal health care and a universal basic income. Employees are much less expensive when one is not providing health care, and also less expensive when pay provides a marginal increase in quality of life instead of all of subsistence.

I think that’s the same reason why I subscribe to the conspiracy theory that the US military opposes both universal healthcare and free of cost college and university education.

I think overall businesses don’t care enough about higher costs because at the end of the day they can just fire me without providing cause if I cost more than I am worth to the business.

There was a thread about cloud services such as cloudinary and why businesses put up with the absurdly high bandwidth charges and someone explained to me that the business isn’t paying for bandwidth charges, it is paying someone to solve their business needs. As long as fragile meat bag humans serve the business needs, I think businesses will employ us.

The US military has no official position on those things at all, and the actual people making it up run the gamut the same as any other cross section of the population. By far the greatest factor impacting recruiting is the overall state of the economy and how easy it is to get any other job, but surely you don't think that means the US military actively sabotages the US economy and job market to boost recruiting.

Businesses aren't demanding these things because they would take away their leverage over their employees. You need the employer for your income and your health insurance right now. Why would they want to make it easier for you to leave them?

Health care should not be linked to employment. This is the original sin underlying a significant number of problems in the country.

Word. Your last point is also right on, and the most irritating.

Where did the post you reply to mention "racists and sexists"?

The post mentions people afraid to speak up, like Gen-X members educated by super progressive people from the real student revolts in 1970.

Except that this education is not sufficient to keep up with the arbitrary word games of rich elites, who incidentally do not care about worker's rights.

> Where did the post you reply to mention "racists and sexists"?

The post pessimizer responded to explicitly mentions neonazis.

> The problem is, where does one draw the line?

The article goes into one of the possible problems: cyberbullying.

Especially with young women, cyberbullying is a bit of a problem. Though the people involved in this case are not involved with cyberbullying, it's not difficult to jump to that issue with the people involved.

Though it depends on local laws, schools often have the mandate to stop bullying and other such behaviors. Courts have been mixed thus far on how cyberbullying is legalistically different than regular bullying and where the mandates/responsibilities (if they exist) start and end for the school administration, especially with mixed minor-adult populations. It is, admittedly, a very difficult line to draw.

As the article states, SCOTUS rarely gets into school-student speech issues, so this decision is expected to set the stage for the next 25-50 years of US policy in the now digital era

EDIT: It's not just young women, cyberbullying is more of an universal problem.

If cyber-bullying is really that problematic, it should be a crime.

Schools aren’t called to solve crime; they should defer to the police.

I'm confused: you say only the police should do something about it, so do you mean that society shouldn't try to prevent bullying, or that the police should run the schools?

I assume they mean (and I agree) that society should try to prevent bullying (that is, criminal harrasment) by reporting it to the police, not by engaging in vigilante 'justice', which is what any school discipline for off campus activity (and really, cancel culture in general) amounts to.

If you believe your vigilanteism is justified (because, and only because, the police won't or can't do their jobs) the onus is on you to clearly communicate that your actions are because the police won't or can't do their jobs, and to support that assertion with resonable evidence, in every single case.

Uh, so if a kid needs a stern talking to you better call the police (and not their parents) is what you are saying?

If all they need is a stern talking to, then what they did isn't criminal harrassment.

So "stern talking to" is the only action a school is allowed to take?

If students know that then what exactly is the disincentive to engage in bullying that doesn't rise to the level of criminal harassment?

Shouldn't a school be a place someone learns appropriate behaviours with less risk of criminal sanctions? It seems that some form of punishment imposed by schools would be reasonable in some circumstances.

I am not sure how you got from "(responce <= stern talking to) implies !(severity >= criminal harassment)" to "(severity < criminal harassment) implies (responce <= stern talking to)"[0] via good-faith misinterpretation.

If they're making a nuisance of themselves at school, the school would presumably give them a detention, with repeat offences eventually resulting in expulsion. If they're making a nuisance of themselves elsewhere, the school is not involved. (Note that the latter applies to criminal actions as well; that's what the police are for.)

0: That is, from "X implies Y" to "Y implies X".

> with repeat offences eventually resulting in expulsion

Expulsion is not really on the table, at least in the U.S.

You seem to be making a bright line distinction between "at school" and "not at school".

This distinction doesn't really exist. Does "school" include virtual learning environments? School sports? Travelling to and from school or sports? Bullying that extends from school to out of school?

Traditionally, schools have always been responsible for these things or have taken actions that occurred out of school grounds into account.

I finished school in the early 1990s and students were expelled then for graffiti attacks out of the school, out if school hours, not in school uniform.

I don't see what is different or new here.

> I don't see what is different or new here.

That's fair as far as it goes, but I'm not claiming it's different or new; I'm claiming it's bad and needs to be stopped.

> Does "school" include virtual learning environments? School sports? Travelling to and from school or sports?

Probably. Probably. Debatably and depends on the mode of transport.

> Bullying that extends from school to out of school?

That's two items; yes to the former, no to the latter.

You interpreted his comment in exactly the opposite of the way it was written, as best I can tell.

I’m ok with schools “punishing” people for breaking social norms, but the punishment should be proportional - detention, extra homework, public shaming, etc.

But expulsion is something that will affect the person for the rest of their life. There should be significant burden of proof before such an action can be taken, and we already have a system (courts) to deal with that.

If someone is bullying online block them or call the police.

Going to parents is probably unwise for a variety of reasons. Possible could solve the issue but more likely will increase the drama without providing any real punishment.

Harrassment and terroristic threats are crimes (varies by location). Most of the nastier bullying could fit those.

I think the issue is if adolescent cyberbullying rises to the level of a crime.

Similar to the US military's idea of Non-Judicial Punishment[0] (drop and give me 50!), school administration often also has the lee-way of assigning punishment to students [1]. This punishment often does not rise to the level of a crime, but still requires action. Things like detention, cleaning toilets, scrubbing hallways, etc. Often, the bully is a minor themselves, and may not understand the implications of their effects. Giving them a police record may not be appropriate if a talking-to will stop the behavior.

SCOTUS's ruling will flesh out this idea a bit more, maybe. If they rule that school administration is able to punish as they see fit for this case, then cyberbullying may be seen as something that does not typically rise to the level of a crime. If they do not, then cyberbullying may need to be revisited as a more serious action on the part of minors.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-judicial_punishment

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_discipline

I think it's also worth acknowledging the current climate and context of concerns about law enforcement in general. These issues are often deeply nuanced, and I don't think LEA is currently equipped to handle that nuance. The fact that the legal system isn't currently involved in some of these cases is arguably a good thing.

> The way it sits today, the majority of people are afraid to speak their thoughts for fear of workplace retaliation.

I hear this argument regularly. Can you cite evidence showing it's actually true?

Look at this mail from the Python Steering Council:

https://marc.info/?l=python-dev&m=161652621725348&w=2

Similar rants from last year have been deleted.

Whenever someone posts the evidence you ask for, it is usually flagged instantly. Perhaps that is why evidence is rarely seen.

Well yes, many people will want to say "fuck you" to their boss at some point in time, and will not do so for fear of retaliation.

In the example you post, someone is ridiculing a group decision on a sensitive topic. Do you actually think that there should be no negative consequences to _ridiculing_ the decisions of your boss or coworkers? Being a dick has always been a way to lose your job, and I think that's okay.

https://www.cato.org/survey-reports/poll-62-americans-say-th...

I've read this multiple times over the last couple years. Please don't accuse me of cherry picking, I don't know anything about Cato, I just googled it and it was the first link(well, via thehill).

Extremely off-topic, but that URL is a great example of why using headline/lede text in links is a bad idea. Really loses its punch when the '%' gets stripped.

Thanks for following up. It seems like a reasonable source. This is sad and worth thinking about.

I wonder how this compares with other countries but I can look that up myself. The article you referenced from The Hill considered the issue but didn't provide much useful data either way. [1]

[1] https://thehill.com/opinion/civil-rights/510402-afraid-to-sp...

I've worked places with diversity and inclusion programs that I think are ridiculous. And I've heard of programs far worse. I smile and say nothing because it's not worth my job. I think there's a lot of people out there like that.

As tempting as it is, "I think a lot of people think like me" isn't really evidence.

For sure. I don't know of any actual evidence though, just anecdotes.

> try going around saying you are a satanist and see how that affects your career

I’m pretty sure that people would give me a weird look and then it would carry on as normal. Is this different somewhere?

If you are a politician, performer, athlete, or CEO in the United States of a high profile company - yes absolutely this is different. Are you an IC in Finland or something? People here get very upset and judgmental as a rule.

I’m in New Zealand. Maybe my assumption that people wouldn’t particularly care is wrong, or my oddities are already factored into their behaviour towards me.

The more imaginary friends you have, the more you're angry about the imaginary friends other people have.

Not really - pagans tend to be more open-minded about such things than monotheists.

I, as a Mormon, faced more social pushback in Georgia ~15 years ago, than my Wiccan friends, but neither of us faced any work pushback or worried about our jobs based on our religious beliefs.

Though I did have a co-member there get fired for being a Mormon and win a discrimination suit. His religiously motivated abstemiousness regarding alcohol got him fired from an aircraft maker since they worried about him NOT drinking with clients (as a salesman.)

Was the abstaining done in an offensive or obnoxious manner?

Nope, hence winning the suit. No one had complained, it was a proactive, hey maybe someone might take offense. Most likely a cover for actual religious malice, which wasn't necessary to prove to win the legal point.

> The school must abide by policies and incorporate student's right to free speech,

"Though public school students do possess First Amendment freedoms, the courts allow school officials to regulate certain types of student expression. For example, school officials may prohibit speech that substantially disrupts the school environment or that invades the rights of others. Many courts have held that school officials can restrict student speech that is lewd.

Many state constitutions contain provisions safeguarding free expression. Some state Supreme Courts have interpreted their constitutions to provide greater protection than the federal Constitution. In addition, a few states have adopted laws providing greater protection for freedom of speech." - https://www.freedomforuminstitute.org/about/faq/what-rights-...

> Being "canceled" is a choice that private individuals and institutions make to not associate themselves with speech, actions, or views they find either objectionable or simply damaging to their brand and business goals.

Being "denied a wedding cake because one is gay" is a choice that private bakeries and institutions make to not associate themselves with speech, actions, or views they find either objectionable or simply damaging to their brand and business goals.

That is not random speech however. That is a protected affiliation. Similarly you cannot discriminate on political or religious grounds.

Some speech is more protected than others.

Also worth noting that the baker in that case won because , in part, the gay couple were not denied service, they were denied a specific message. The baker was willing to sell them anything else.

Had that gone the other way, it would have had some icky implications for compelled speech/artwork.

> Also worth noting that the baker in that case won because , in part, the gay couple were not denied service, they were denied a specific message. The baker was willing to sell them anything else.

To quote the dissenting Opinion in this case, written by Justice Ginsburg,

In contrast to Jack, Craig and Mullins simply requested a wedding cake: They mentioned no message or anything else distinguishing the cake they wanted to buy from any other wedding cake Phillips would have sold.

The "Jack" in question:

> William Jack visited three Colorado bakeries. His visits followed a similar pattern. He requested two cakes “made to resemble an open Bible. He also requestedthat each cake be decorated with Biblical verses. [He]requested that one of the cakes include an image of two groomsmen, holding hands, with a red ‘X’ over the image. On one cake, he requested [on] one side[,] . . . ‘God hates sin. Psalm 45:7’ and on the opposite side of the cake ‘Homosexuality is a detestable sin.Leviticus 18:2.’ On the second cake, [the one] with the image of the two groomsmen covered by a red ‘X’[Jack] requested [these words]: ‘God loves sinners’ and on the other side ‘While we were yet sinners Christ died for us. Romans 5:8.’ ” App. to Pet. for Cert. 319a; see id., at 300a, 310a.

...

The bakeries agreed to bake & sell him these cakes, but without the specific messages he wanted. Jack filled charges against these bakeries, and the Colorado courts upheld the rights of the bakeries in this case. The Supreme Court in the Masterpiece Bakery used this case as the precedent, and I agree with Justice Ginsburg's dissent that it should not apply.

> The Court concludes that “the Commission’s considera-tion of Phillips’ religious objection did not accord with its treatment of [the other bakers’] objections.” Ante, at 15. See also ante, at 5–7 (GORSUCH, J., concurring). But the cases the Court aligns are hardly comparable. The bakers would have refused to make a cake with Jack’s requested message for any customer, regardless of his or her religion. And the bakers visited by Jack would have sold him any baked goods they would have sold anyone else. The bakeries’ refusal to make Jack cakes of a kind they would not make for any customer scarcely resembles Phillips’ refusal to serve Craig and Mullins: Phillips would not sell to Craig and Mullins, for no reason other than their sexual orientation, a cake of the kind he regularly sold to others.

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-111_j4el.pdf

> Had that gone the other way, it would have had some icky implications for compelled speech/artwork.

This is addressed in her dissent as well.

Well, that's a weird take on things for being a member of a voluntary group activity at school. I certainly wouldn't want someone to be banned from school, expelled or given detention based on what they said, but I don't see why a coach should be keeping people on the team who bad mouth the team, or a music director keeping a tuba player on who continually speaks out about how bad the flute section is on instagram.

Does that difference make sense?

That only makes sense if the "optional" activity is not funded by a public school and does not make use of any public school property. Otherwise it is a government sanctioned activity, however optional.

>Being "canceled" is a choice that private individuals and institutions

You're making a lot of assumptions about the comment above yours. Language changes.

Your argument would be stronger if you proposed an alternate definition rather than just saying “you’re wrong, that’s not what it means anymore!”

What I'm getting at is this: The story is about notable consequences at a school, which is not a private institution (generally). So, the commenter was probably using the term in conjunction with such consequences. It was clear from the comment, and the response seemed to be nit-picking a pseudo dictionary definition, so I tried to point out the colloquial usage.

> Conflating these things is a favorite straw man of people who simply feel scared and angry that they don't always get to be jerks with zero social or career implications (try going around saying you are a satanist and see how that affects your career, this isn't a new thing, just people are whining about it more loudly lately). They are very much not the same.

Can you direct me to any incidents where someone expressed support for Satanism, even as a joke, and was then summarily fired after a mob harassed his employer with angry phone calls/tweets expressing (almost entirely empty) threats to boycott or worse?

Maybe I missed something in this discussion, has someone ever said "I'm a Christian" and then been fired?

There aren't that many Satanists in the world, but the far more common case is presumably people fired as soon as an employer found out they were gay. Note that sexual orientation is still not technically a protected class, though the EEOC will often take up for you anyway: https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/legal-and-compliance/.... Many localities explicitly call out sexual orientation and Obama signed an Executive Order mandating non-discrimination in federal agencies and contractors, but the actual Civil Rights Act does not protect this and case law on specific suits has been wildly inconsistent about it.

But is it really only jerks? I've seen attempts to get people cancelled for what they've posted on social media over 10 years ago. Sometimes cancellation happens over allegations that are later proven to be false. There was a TED talk once about a woman who found out she was fired after getting off an airplane because she posted an insensitive joke. Was she wrong for doing that? Probably. Should she have been fired on the spot without even having any form of communication with her employer?

What if Twitter one day decided that something you happened to say, perhaps in the past, disagreed with some social "norm" that you weren't even aware of? Would you be happy to be fired? Or can you confidently say that you will never have any opinion different from that of the "social norm"?

> Should she have been fired on the spot without even having any form of communication with her employer?

Too be honest, that depends entirely on the joke and her role, doesn’t it?

Yes these things happen, humans are judgmental and leery of being associated with people who are undesirable in the eyes their peer group and the specific biases of that group - so it isn't always fair. That is life and has always been true.

However, the term "canceled" itself is more typically about a specific and recent set of peers and biases - people on the right who are angry that people on the left are telling them to stop using the f-g or n-word, etc or angry that guys are getting outed for doing exactly the rape-y crap they themselves did and normalized and probably celebrated when they were in college.

Now, I honestly don't know if Louis CK should have had his career ended because he was pervy (pulled his junk out a lot, right? I get these stories confused), but that is more a function of social media being a huge, new megaphone for ostracizing people, not that the left is on some spectacular cancel rampage as it is normally characterized. We do need to grapple with how to deal with this new megaphone, I agree.

However, again, mostly this angst is not about a genuine desire to be good citizens and calling out dangerous corner cases. If it were, we'd be having a very different and much more constructive conversation. Most of this angst is really about the right wanting to keep being the right and going back to good old days, defensively dismissing the way the good old days were actually pretty terrible for a lot of people and we've learned a lot about how to be better humans. Of course there are cherry picked examples (in a population of 7B you can probably found thousands). But those examples don't change the underlying dynamics and motivations of what is going on here on average*.

I'm not defending the "right" in any means at all. For me, the term "cancel" means any attempt to ruin anyone's livelihood for saying or doing something considered "wrong", sometimes as a baseless accusation. It doesn't matter what political opinion they hold. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem to be of the opinion that the political "right" is the only group capable of being "cancelled". I disagree.

If I see something I disagree with on the Internet, maybe a joke gone wrong, I do not necessarily have to like it. But I will, nonetheless, celebrate that they are able to post what they have without facing potentially career-ending repercussions from the other side.

Respectfully, I think some introspection would be helpful here. You're responding to someone with a seemingly reasonable question about "cancel culture", and providing an explanation that the concept was made up by angry people with bad politics who don't want to be good humans. Do you see how this might be incompatible with the kinds of constructive conversations you're looking for?

For those not familiar with the lady he's referring to, her name is Justine Sacco. She was a senior director of corporate communications, and this (among several tweets making fun of people or places) is the one that presumably got her fires:

“Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!”

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-t...

In case it isn't obvious, she's making a joke on racist stereotypes. Edit: definitely read the article, it's quite good.

I recognized who the parent comment was talking about immediately. Note that this woman is now the Chief Communications Officer of the Match group.

Goes to show the fear that everyone shows about this topic is almost always overblown. Assuming you aren't actually Harvey Weinstein and didn't do anything criminal, the worst that happens in every other case is you get the same job or even better for a different company a few years later. Brendan Eich and Mel Gibson still have no trouble finding work. Cancellation doesn't ever seem to be a life sentence.

James Damore seems to be doing fine, just not at Google: https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-damore-b277b62b/ (interesting that he doesn't name the startup, though).

> Cancellation doesn't ever seem to be a life sentence.

I don't believe "they'll recover eventually" is in any way an excuse for "let's ruin this person's life [temporarily] for fun". They got fired and are likely unable to have a stable life for a year. I sure wouldn't like to get fired and have the paparazzi in front of my house for the next month.

> Goes to show that the fear everyone shows about this topic is almost always overblown.

Sounds like the right amount of fear to me. Some people don't have the privilege to go without a job for a year. Some people don't have the mental fortitude to deal with the crap that ensues.

People shouldn't need to worry about getting fired because the people of social media didn't agree with what they said.

> Was she wrong for doing that? Probably.

You're being somewhat generous here.

Am I though? She posted a joke on Twitter mocking the idea that white people couldn't get AIDS. It's only unfortunate that her statement was immediately interpreted as racist.

> Am I though?

Yes.

> She posted a joke on Twitter mocking the idea that white people couldn't get AIDS.

Even if you believe the subsequent backtracking, that's still a profoundly stupid thing to be doing in that circumstance, and it shows a complete lack of any critical thought as to how your actions and words are perceived.

> Even if you believe the subsequent backtracking

Of course I believe the subsequent backtracking. Have you read the New York Times article? Most people aren't racists.

> ... a complete lack of critical thought as to how your actions and words are perceived.

A lot of people have times when they don't think about how their words will be perceived. I sure have, and I'm sure you have too. However, I do not believe such minor stupidity should result in immediate loss of job, without warning.

> Conflating these things....

If I'm reading you right, then you are very wrong [0]. So much so that the court's own website addresses this:

"If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable."

The idea of free speech is that for it to be free, you MUST allow unpopular speech (otherwise, it's not free!). This is hard to remember when we disagree with someone' actions.

A government agent (the school) taking repercussions against a child (she was 14 at the time) because she expressed frustration about the government should clearly fall into the violation category.

To not be a violation would be have an incalculable chill on free speech across schools impacting roughly 70 million kids (plus their parents).

[0] - https://www.uscourts.gov/educational-resources/educational-a...

I find it hard to believe that the anti cancelation argument is purely made by evil jerks (e.g. I don't consider lex to be a jerk). You don't think it's easier now than ever before to be 'canceled' by a social media mob? Don't there have to be some negative consequences to allowing for permanent cancelations? By all means, people that do extremely horrible things should be shunned but how and where does the line get drawn for the more mediocre offenses? Also, people are fallible, they screw up and make mistakes. Do they have a right to make amends and be forgiven for dumb things they did in the past?

It almost seems like it's trending towards a crowd sourced social credit system similar to what the CCP implemented.

I am not on the left or right, but shouting social media mobs with pitch forks doesn't seem like the best way to achieve internet 'justice'.

Being harassed/doxed is different than being cancelled

It is important to disambiguate the two

The difference being that in one case they harass you directly and in the other they harass your employer, family, and any future employers?

Unorganized individuals from twitter contacting your employer isn't harassment. If it is the implications would be scary the other way around: would you punish someone who pointed out a problem that happened to become popular on a social network?

That's not how cancelling works, except maybe in the case of celebrities. When you are canceled, no one calls and has a polite chat with your employer. They call and threaten your employer with arson. They find where you live and vandalize your home. It's harassment. It's illegal.

That line seems blurry to me. How do you define both and where is the line? I'm not sure that many angry emotional twitter users contemplate any line, I would assume most just think "I strongly disagree with that person's opinion or actions and I must punish them". I think most people would agree that harassment and doxing are bad, but I also think that most people would think that doing bad things to "bad" people is sometimes ok. Mobs of emotional people are not paragons of morality, bad actions by a few quickly spread and the morality of the mob normalizes to that new worse level.

I don't see how you can possibly say it's easier now than ever. Past incarnations of this type of thing like the KKK, lynch mobs, witch hunts, the Spanish Inquisition, often had legal authority and canceled you from Earth rather than just forcing you to use some platform other than Twitter or Facebook to publish your opinion. Nor are Hollywood blacklists a remotely new thing. The only new element is the blacklistable offenses have changed from support of communists and various left radicals to sexual harassment and racism.

> I don't see how you can possibly say it's easier now than ever. Past incarnations of this type of thing like the KKK, lynch mobs, witch hunts, the Spanish Inquisition, often had legal authority and canceled you from Earth rather than just forcing you to use some platform other than Twitter or Facebook to publish your opinion.

I was talking specifically about "cancelling" people with social media mobs to shout down opposing views or harass them into submission. The scale and ease at which it can be done has allowed it to be used as a tool to beat down morally reprehensible individuals as well as some that have arguably reasonable views.

> Nor are Hollywood blacklists a remotely new thing. The only new element is the blacklistable offenses have changed from support of communists and various left radicals to sexual harassment and racism.

I make no claim that sexual harassment and racism are good things or that they should be allowed. My problem is with the gray area that is harder to say whether or not it is allowed. I think trump is a corrupt numbskull, but I think it is absolutely horrible to attempt to "cancel" people or organizations that openly support him and I think the whole idea of shouting down or harassing opposing viewpoints that a good portion of society consider to be reasonable into submission is reprehensible.

Vigilante mobs are not rational entities, they should not be used as a tool to win arguments. Their use will continue to further radicalize both sides of the spectrum and I don't see how they could possibly lead to anything good for humanity. Anyone or any group that says I think this therefore I am correct and they are wrong should be looked at skeptically. Policies and issues need to be discussed academically and not through twitter shouting matches.

> This is entirely a social phenomena and has no legal basis.

It can still be a major problem in a supposedly "free" society if there is a culture of punishing people for their thoughts. For one thing, it makes democracy pointless.

> Conflating these things is a favorite straw man of people who simply feel scared and angry that they don't always get to be jerks with zero social or career implications

Speaking of straw men. There’s a legitimate concern that political discourse is run through a few monopoly providers with biased and inconsistent moderation. Stating that the actual reason is because they’re jerks is a fantastic straw man of your own.

You seem awfully against the anti-cancel culture crowd, but do you feel like there should be zero recourse for someone who's company fired them amid public baseless accusations? Say for example a bunch of people jump on a bandwagon to tarnish someone's reputation publicly after hearing from someone else that he (lets be real) did X. So the company fires them because twitter is spreading their name around and then it turns out the accusations were plainly false. Now his income is hamstrung and everything else is just out there.

An even more ridiculous example might be an annocuous disagreement with what a lot of people are saying. "I don't think the cops should be abolished, and anyone should be able to protest for their beliefs".

I don't think anyone disagrees with the other implied strawman of the guy who goes around constantly making rape jokes and is surprised when his friends don't like him anymore. It's more about how easy it is to just spread dirt, truthful or otherwise.

here you go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahanoy_Area_School_District_v...

url encoding the dot with %2E does work around it.

Plus the school is “government”. This creates an interesting wrinkle here.

The answer should be rather obvious if you put it like this: Should a school get to regulate the speech and expression of its students outside the class room?

adding a pointless query string to the url helps, eg: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahanoy_Area_School_District_v...

A hash/fragment at the end likely also works https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahanoy_Area_School_District_v...

Redirect created, so your link should work now. Given that Hacker News isn't the only platform that does this, I wonder if there's a world in which it makes sense for Wikipedia to redirect "foo" to "foo." by default, assuming a page named "foo." exists and a page named "foo" does not?

> Edit2: Looks like HN can't handle URLs that end with a period. Clicking the link above won't work; you have to manually terminate it with a period before loading (should end with "B.L.", not "B.L")

Did you try https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahanoy_Area_School_District_v... ?

This is a public school so they are considered a part of (subsidized by) the government. But if it were a private Christian religious school, and she was promoting Satan worship in her out of school TikTok time, would you think the school should be forced to ignore it and let her keep singing in their televised choir?

Hmmm, I'm not sure that's the meaning of free speech. Forcing a private entity to provide an unpaid service is something quite different.

Another workaround for the issue in Edit 2 is to use the page ID number instead of the title.

https://en.wikipedia.org/?oldid=1019908655

Why the fuck did anyone at that school even care what a 14 year old said? That is not normal behavior for adults.

At that age I could've exclaimed something along those lines to my teacher's face and they'd just have laughed at me and asked me to calm down.

If I pulled that at work I'd be asked whether everything is alright.

Apparently nowadays the appropriate response to a child throwing a tantrum or having a mental breakdown is to have one as well.

In my experience, more than a few school administrators and staff take in loco parentis pretty seriously.

Clearly you haven't dealt with many schools. Only when the stakes are so low can people afford to be so petty.

Some school faculty and administration are incredibly petty and vindictive. Certainly not all but a lot. Grown adults absolutely pick favorites, bully students, talk down to them, and carry out petty beefs for any reason or no reason at all. Sometimes they hurt the children to get back at parents they don't like. Sometimes they (for whatever reason) seek validation from students and will participate in bullying of unpopular students. These can be trivial things, like accepting late work from some students but no others or grading one student's work more harshly. Other times they believe they are doing a student good by "teaching them a lesson" or expressing their disapproval of the student or family's lifestyle.

I have absolutely no problem believing the school administration and coach were offended and rather than discussing it with the 14 year old they decided to prove who was boss by punishing her.

Reading this gave me flashbacks to high school. This is very sad but true. While I typically kept to myself and avoided their wrath, certain members of the administration were just horrible, and I could clearly see the mental toll it took on fellow students.

> "Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low."

Sayre's law makes a return

Casual reminder that this school is less than 30 minutes from the one that jailed a girl for a year and a half for making a fake myspace page lightly making fun of the principal. (As seen in the excellent doc: Kids For Cash)

PA has some extreme deep south vibes in some areas that constitute an aggressive hatred and power addiction over younger people.

They say that Pennsylvania is Philadelphia on one side, Pittsburgh on the other, and Kentucky in between.

What does Kentucky have to do with the faculty?

Kentucky is understood to be less politically progressive than Philadelphia and Pitsburgh.

Growing up in PA I definitely experienced this. Some teachers were great, but I remember a particular few who would get noticeably upset, angered, and irritated when challenged or questioned by students.

The worst case I experienced was when a gym teacher was teaching a "graduation course" which was required to be passed in order to graduate. We were the first year to have this class, and I was in the first semester, part of the guinea pig group. We had a semester long project and the teacher in charge would not approve my project because it did not involve raising money for charity (not a requirement on the rubric). Some students sold t-shirts, some organized 5k runs, others wrote children's books. We were encouraged to make money for a cause, but it was not required. I wanted to build an Android app since Android was recently released, and I wanted to make something anyone could use.

The teacher repeatedly told me to go back to the drawing board, fabricating missed requirements that were not on the rubric. Only on the final day of project approvals did he say I needed to raise money, which was not a requirement (more like a suggestion or even trend). I never got the approval, so I shouldn't have passed, but he didn't bring it up the rest of the semester and never looked at my work afterwards.

Final day presentations, the principal (awesome guy who knew nearly every student) watches and asks what I thought about the class and I told my experience. They got rid of that "graduation project" class the following year, and the next semester had all new teachers for it. Half of the kids didn't even donate the money they made.

tl;dr - almost didn't graduate high school because a gym teacher wanted me to raise money as part of a project.

I don't think schools should get involved in off campus speech or activities. However, we are seeing more and more of it. This case isn't even that extreme compared to others. There are people being suspended from actual school for non-threatening photos with guns or even just liking a photo of a gun.

On the other hand, I don't see the problem with cutting a student from an extracurricular for actions that contradict its intended purpose or standards. If you're saying f the school and f cheerleading and the goal of the cheer squad is to promote school spirit and pride... (she wasn't suspended, given detention, or kicked off the softball team) I know I would have been benched or cut if I talked about throwing a game or not trying my hardest and those statements made it back to the coach. It's not like they were monitoring social media for this.

I'll probably get downvoted, but I guess that's the cost of exercising my free speech.

Certainly agreed, for the speech that has nothing to do with any school activities. Your comparison about talking about throwing a game and the coach learning about it is apt; that sort of speech is essentially the same as your boss at work overhearing that you want to sabotage your work. I feel like the coach, or boss, taking action because they don't feel their player or employee has the best interests of the team or company at heart is well-warranted.

However, for speech that does not relate to any school activities (for example, taking your point of a student exercising their Second Amendment right) should not result in action against the student.

> I know I would have been benched or cut if I talked about throwing a game or not trying my hardest and those statements

Do you think you'd get a years suspension as a 14 year old if you'd said "fuck this team" to a friend after losing a match? And do you really think that would have been an appropriate response?

You can't compare her venting to threats of throwing games or intentionally under-performing.

Yeah, if I said that, I could see myself being cut for that season (year). I think that could be appropriate depending on the circumstances. To make it similar to this case, it wouldn't just be a friend who heard it, it would be the majority of that school. In which case, I can see that as reasonable.

"You can't compare her venting to threats of throwing games or intentionally under-performing."

You seem to be missing the fact that these are one in the same for her scenario. Dragging down school spirit and pride through her comments is exactly the opposite of the cheer squad's function. Note that she was not kicked off the softball team.

She was 14. It’s unreasonable to expect a 14 yo to always represent an organization. Hell, almost no adults ever do that.

I don't see how being 14 is an excuse. People mature at different rates, but I reasonably believe she knew right from wrong. After all 14 is way past mens rea for much more serious topics.

I am going to impart upon you the worst curse I know: I hope you are held to the standards you hold others to.

I don't see that as a curse. That's what everyone should be doing.

I think the penalty is far too extreme, I think the cheer-squad equivalent of running laps should've been used. It doesn't seem unreasonable to me, though, that the cheer squad can have standards around esprit de corps and have some mechanism to enforce that. The girl didn't just talk to her friend, wholly understandable, but also sent a message to 250 people many of whom, presumably, are fellow students and cheer leaders, some of whom were upset.

I think you're right that it's unreasonable to expect a 14 year old to always represent an organization well, but, that's kind of the point of both being in the organization and punishing poor behavior. The child, who isn't ready to act like we expect an adult to, gets lessons in how we expect adults to act. The cheer leading program is a great way to teach that, provided you don't go too extreme with it, like banning the girl for a year.

Imagine going through school learning that you're allowed to say whatever outside of school and can't be punished for it. Then you get a job and talk shit about it on social media the same way you've been taught is perfectly acceptable, and... You get fired. Conversely, imagine being a student in a student org and getting scolded and minor and increasing punishments for acting inappropriately and you come to understand what's expected of you. I think the latter student is better equipped for the real world.

If you angrily told a personal friend "fuck this team" after a losing game, does that get you suspended? No it doesn't..

A 24 hour self deleting vent to a personal circle of friends should be treated similarly.

As someone else in this HN thread eloquently said:

> It's not just that it was expressed off campus. It was expressed privately. Her speech on its own never reached the school. It was deliberately recorded and rebroadcast. The disruptive speech was the replaying of what she said, not her saying it. There is a huge difference.

Was she suspended? I saw that she was only cut from the cheer squad. I could certainly see getting cut from the tram for the year if I said similar things and the coach heard about it. It wouldn't matter how it got to the coach.

To be clear, isn't the suspension from participating in those activities (cheer) not from school itself? The former seems completely appropriate to me. The latter not at all.

It seems she could still be in cheer, just not on the higher status squad.

I read that she was cut from the cheer squad for 1 year. No actual school suspension. It seems she was also still allowed on the softball team.

> I don't see the problem with cutting a student from an extracurricular for actions that contradict its intended purpose or standards.

"Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion."

Sports or Extra Curricular Activities come with additional responsibilities than simply attending school. When you participate in these activities you become a representative of the school. In a simple example this is why most sports teams ( used to ) wear ties and or slacks on game day.

The community and the school views you as an extension of the school's pride and standards. You sign a contract to this affect when you join the activity.

Cheerleading has a unique set of requirements beyond other programs. In some schools the student body votes for the cheer squad, in others the ASB council does. Sometimes they are members of the ASB council. In some schools that are actually considered a sport ( inside joke for other who have been involved in cheer, and yes it is one of if not the toughest sport ).

This makes the contract a Cheerleader signs a bit different than other activities. The contracts do become a bit vague. However, sending out an instagram as the one in this instance would certainly fail the criteria for most cheer contracts.

Activities outside of school typically prohibited by most activity contracts include drinking, attending parties where illegal activities are occurring, being arrested, disparaging your team or opponent, bullying any member of the student body, etc.

My two cents, the severity of the punishment is the problem. I believe the penalty outweighed the violation. A single game suspension and an apology would have been a better teachable response. Instead they created a crisis where one did not exist.

I can see either as reasonable (the one game suspension or the 1 year). I thought there were other issues she was causing too. Didn't it say she was causing issues in the team dynamic by essentially bullying another teammate, stating (or was it implying) the coach already talked to her about it? It seemed like this was not a first strike.

Yes you are correct.

Perhaps the accumulation was the basis for the year suspension. In other sports you would be benched for poor behavior. Sports like cheer and dance are hard to bench people due to choreography dependencies.

> I don't think schools should get involved in off campus speech or activities. However, we are seeing more and more of it. This case isn't even that extreme compared to others. There are people being suspended from actual school for non-threatening photos with guns or even just liking a photo of a gun.

It's a symptom of a bigger problem in that U.S.A. schools and companies can terminate for arbitrary reasons.

Such would never hold where I live and most other places where an expulsion from school requires approval from an independent government organization or a court which of course will give the defending party ample opportunity to tell it's own version of events and defend itself.

The U.S.A. seems culturally built upon a mentality that one should fear government, but never citizens, and consequently has developed an idea of “Free speech is only from the government.” whereas in most developed nations, freedom of opinion is a more active right that the government also attempts to safeguard from private citizens and schools.

There is a whitelist of reasons in most developed nations wherefore one may be terminated, not a blacklist wherefore one may not, and “saying controversial things outside of work, not in any way associating oneself with one's empoyer” is usually not one of them.

> If you're saying f the school and f cheerleading and the goal of the cheer squad is to promote school spirit and pride... (she wasn't suspended, given detention, or kicked off the softball team) I know I would have been benched or cut if I talked about throwing a game or not trying my hardest and those statements made it back to the coach. It's not like they were monitoring social media for this.

Luckily I can't be let go for this either.

>It's a symptom of a bigger problem in that U.S.A. schools and companies can terminate for arbitrary reasons.

Is this specific case really arbitrary though? Did you read the contract/terms & conditions that this individual was under? Was this termination random or on personal whim? Because it sounds like it's the result of an individual's actions in violation of an agreement between that individual and another entity.

>The U.S.A. seems culturally built upon a mentality that one should fear government, but never citizens, and consequently has developed an idea of “Free speech is only from the government.” whereas in most developed nations, freedom of opinion is a more active right that the government also attempts to safeguard from private citizens and schools.

Yes, that mentality is literally part of American culture. In the U.S., governments, unlike citizens, are granted a monopoly on the use of force so a natural distrust is not only appropriate but warranted. The government is under no obligation to defend your rights if you literally sign them away (although there are some rights which cannot be waived). You can say whatever you want, but there may be consequences depending on what you say and where you say it.

>> If you're saying f the school and f cheerleading and the goal of the cheer squad is to promote school spirit and pride... (she wasn't suspended, given detention, or kicked off the softball team) I know I would have been benched or cut if I talked about throwing a game or not trying my hardest and those statements made it back to the coach. It's not like they were monitoring social media for this. > Luckily I can't be let go for this either.

People, including children, must learn there are consequences for what they say, particularly in a public forum (and this was effectively so). The only recourse in cases such as this is whether the response was appropriate e.g., within terms of a contract. I personally do not believe that what was said and who it was said to would warrant expulsion, but that's just an opinion, not a contract.

> Is this specific case really arbitrary though? Did you read the contract/terms & conditions that this individual was under? Was this termination random or on personal whim? Because it sounds like it's the result of an individual's actions in violation of an agreement between that individual and another entity.

Such contracts would not be enforceable of course.

Employer protections are not contractually waivable, they would be quite useless if they were.

> Yes, that mentality is literally part of American culture. In the U.S., governments, unlike citizens, are granted a monopoly on the use of force so a natural distrust is not only appropriate but warranted. The government is under no obligation to defend your rights if you literally sign them away (although there are some rights which cannot be waived). You can say whatever you want, but there may be consequences depending on what you say and where you say it.

Yet in most countries where the culture is not so, one does not for instance have a right to own firearms and self-defence in general is more curbed, so I do not believe that.

> People, including children, must learn there are consequences for what they say, particularly in a public forum (and this was effectively so). The only recourse in cases such as this is whether the response was appropriate e.g., within terms of a contract. I personally do not believe that what was said and who it was said to would warrant expulsion, but that's just an opinion, not a contract.

This is a circular reasoning; such consequences exist in the U.S.A. because the country allows employees to be terminated for it. — there are no such consequences in most developed nations.

Whether you see an issue with it is orthogonal to the legality/constitutionality of the matter.

I don't see an issue with it legally/constitutionally. Case law has been pretty clear that it's not an unrestricted right, this punishment seems logical and thus likely acceptable under common law, and I haven't seen any real support for a theory in which this is not acceptable (besides 1A MFer).

While students do not retain all their First Amendment rights, case law is clear that they retain them to some extent, and in particular Tinker makes clear to what extent schools may restrict those rights. Further, I believe the school will not be able to successfully argue that her speech posed a substantial disruption. As it was neither bullying nor threatening and shared privately, the extent to which it may have constituted a disruption was caused by the student who shared it rather than her; if it did pose a disruption, it wouldn't have done so had it not been shared by (I presume) one of her classmates.

Anyway, another reason why I would be very surprised if SCOTUS rules against her is that criticism of government institutions is precisely what the First Amendment is designed for.

I thought her speech pertaining to the other girl constituted bullying.

I doubt the privacy laws really hold snapchat as private communication. PA law is very restrictive about recording. If someone recorded her conversation so that it could be played beyond the 24hr period in snapchat, it's possible they could be prosecuted for a felony under the wiretap laws if snaps are actually considered private.

Tinker doesn't really provide clear criteria. The disruption would have to be proven, but the articles don't give us all the details around the issues that were being caused on the team. It's possible she reiterated or confirmed her position at school or the activity, further causing the disruption even if some other person was the first to bring it up (ie it's likely not all of her speech occured off campus). Tinker also doesn't define censoring. It's mostly about not suspending or suppressing student speech on campus in a formal classroom setting. The nature of an extracurricular can carry additional responsibilities and expectations (things like illegal activities, bullying, not following team standards, even performance issues - which you could say this meets) . In this case the school did not try to censor the off campus speech, it merely took action to remove a team member that had a performance issue by violating team policy. There was no formal discipline and she was even allowed to continue with softball.

> 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?

I don't see how that can constitute bullying; the student mentioned here is her friend. It's critical of some freshman getting on the varsity team, but it doesn't appear here that she even mentioned said freshman.

Privacy laws are not really relevant; I was speaking of privacy in a broader sense, in the sense that what she said was meant for just her immediate circle of friends, and not wider dissemination.

If she had been disruptive in person at the school, that's a completely different story, but I would expect we would have heard of that if that had been the case. Judging it as a case of purely off-campus speech, there's no way this qualifies as disruptive.

Extracurriculars can carry additional responsibilities, but if they are provided by a government institution, then they have to follow the Constitution. As for the definition of censorship, punishing a student for their speech is censorship. 'Team policy' is not an excuse if it is unconstitutional. If speech restrictions can apply off-campus and outside of school events, a 'team policy' could just as well include things like never making political statements, or never making left/right political statements, and so on.

If you're the only freshman making the team, then you don't need to be named to be identified. I did just see that text and agree that the text was not bullying.

You realize she sent this snap to 250 people? Do you have any privacy expectations when sharing stuff with that many people on a social media platform? I wouldn't expect anything to stay private if you put it on thr internet and tell 250 kids. This is not just a circle of friends. I don't see how privacy/recording laws would just stop applying if it was considered private. Which is sort of my point. If there was a valid invasion of privacy, I would expect legal action to be taken. It seems that did not happen.

"there's no way this qualifies as disruptive."

Unless it's disrupting team dynamic. It does goes directly against the goals of the team - promoting school pride and spirit.

"then they have to follow the Constitution"

That's not really true as that's not happening now. There are tons of Constitutional rights that are essentially ignored by schools including 1st, 2nd, and 4th. This case is basically up for seeing if those exceptions apply here or if a new exception is to be created. I think that this team policy will be found to acceptable because it's really a performance issue, not a speech issue as she is going against the goals of the team.

> If you're the only freshman making the team, then you don't need to be named to be identified.

She didn't really even mention a freshman making the team, although it was vaguely alluded to.

> You realize she sent this snap to 250 people? Do you have any privacy expectations when sharing stuff with that many people on a social media platform? I wouldn't expect anything to stay private if you put it on thr internet and tell 250 kids. This is not just a circle of friends. I don't see how privacy/recording laws would just stop applying if it was considered private. Which is sort of my point. If there was a valid invasion of privacy, I would expect legal action to be taken. It seems that did not happen.

The point was that it wasn't intended for a larger audience outside of her circle of friends.

> Unless it's disrupting team dynamic. It does goes directly against the goals of the team - promoting school pride and spirit.

Could complaining about the school off-campus and outside of school events disrupt student morale, justifying suspending a student? Anyway, even the judge who dissented in the appeal agreed that it wasn't disruptive:

> Judge Thomas L. Ambro disagreed with his colleagues regarding off-campus speech and said it would have been enough for his colleagues to simply have ruled in Levy’s favor because her speech was not substantially disruptive.

> That's not really true as that's not happening now.

It did happen. She was already restored by a judge to the JV team years ago.

> There are tons of Constitutional rights that are essentially ignored by schools including 1st, 2nd, and 4th.

There are tons of Constitutional rights that are ignored by government at every level.

> There are people being suspended from actual school for non-threatening photos with guns or even just liking a photo of a gun.

You may get downvoted for making a preposterous claim with no supporting evidence.

https://nypost.com/2019/04/10/students-suspended-over-snapch...

Just one of several incidents, I chose the first one that popped up on DDG.

There have been several examples. Here's one from recently:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/family-of-boy-suspen...

> Nine-year-old Ka Mauri Harrison was taking a test virtually when he saw his teacher rush to get his attention after she spotted the BB gun in his room, a New Orleans NBC affiliate WDSU reported.

> Ka Mauri's parents chose to start the school year off remotely, due to the coronavirus pandemic.

> The incident resulted in the fourth grader being expelled from his school. However, his punishment was reduced to a suspension this week.

> Harrison's family called the punishment a mistake, adding that it threatens their son's academic future.

> "This is an injustice. It's a systemic failure," Chelsea Cusimano, the family's attorney, told The Washington Post on Friday. "They're applying on-campus rules to these children, even though they're learning virtually in their own homes."

> The boy's father, Nyron Harrison said, "They are treating it as if he brought a weapon to school," according to The New Orleans Advocate. "They told me he would be facing expulsion."

> Jefferson Parish Schools, a Louisiana school district that includes Ka Mauri's school Woodmere Elementary, told The Hill that it does not comment on individual student records.

> "Regarding discipline, it is our policy that teachers and administrators may employ reasonable disciplinary and corrective measures to maintain order," the district added.

Here's one suspended for liking picture of gun:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4488386/Boy-suspend...

Another one:

https://nypost.com/2019/04/10/students-suspended-over-snapch...

In a country where arms are part of the constitutional rights, students liking picture on social media or having it in the background during a virtual zoom conference is natural. Getting suspended over it is absurd.

Here's another related one. Virginia Tech Women's soccer player Kiersten Hening alleges she got benched for not taking the knee before a soccer match. Now she is suing. Here is a lawyer's breakdown of the lawsuit:

https://youtu.be/kMDN-9HoTbw

https://youtu.be/iPZbygw5PN4

Thanks for the links. They're really eye-opening.

I'd be more inclined to agree but the Snap was hardly public - it disappeared long before school resumed - and her parents were heavily involved, appealing this decision to all levels of school admin before launching a suit. A teenager saying "fuck this $whatever" outside of school hours is hardly disruptive enough to justify this level of punishment. And that level of punishment over something so trivial makes it more difficult for other students to exercise their right to speech without government interference.

It sounds like it was pretty disruptive to the cheer squad with the bullying and interference with the team dynamic. They didn't suspend her nor cut her from the softball team. The only "discipline" she recieved was being cut from the cheer squad that year due to the disruption she was causing there. She became an active participant in speech that is contrary to the purpose of the cheer squad. I don't know of any sport that will let you be on the team if you are sabotaging the goals of the team.

What other speech would be interfered with? It's not like she was suspended, given detention, etc like we see in other cases of off-campus speech issues. It seems this case is fundamentally different from those other cases since formal discipline was never taken and only involved an extracurricular activity. So I don't really see this impacting other areas of speech and I would hope the court acknowledges these differences and greatly restricts their powers. But I think this case would meet whatever guidelines they come up with.

Two judges have held that:

- BL did not waive any constitutional rights when she signed the cheer contract.

- BL’s Snap was off campus speech.

- BL’s Snap did not cause any actual or foreseeable disruption of school activities.

Here’s the appeal court’s ruling:

https://www2.ca3.uscourts.gov/opinarch/191842p.pdf

"BL did not waive any constitutional rights when she signed the cheer contract."

This is very interesting. I guess they mean any off campus rights. Many rights are clearly restricted on campus, including school events at any location. I also see the bring up that the prohibited conduct in the contract is not strictly defined. Yet we have plenty of laws which are also not strictly defined and they are upheld (so much for lenity).

Thanks for the link. It's interesting that the judges contend that they should only be looking at the first snap even though the background contains quoted testimony that both captions were part of the concern. Then they go on to say that the first caption is not information, which might be true. But the second one does have negative information about the selection decision. Although it's also interesting that opinions are not considered information, when by any other test they would be. I just find it odd that they would overlook the testimony they quoted in the background previously. And a similar issue with when they talk about the act occurring between seasons, yet tryouts were supposedly just held for that season.

It's also interesting that they didn't examine it from a performance aspect. They do mention a test of whether the person can be punished off campus for the speech. They only investigate this from the standpoint of the team being "the government". They do not look into whether private teams punish students for similar issues, and thus if the school team requires the same customary practices to effectively function. Essentially the same reasoning that schools are allowed to restrict other rights in the classroom - that they need the customary authority that comes with the implementation of activity (school, team, etc) because being restricted to only the role of government would make them an ineffective institution. It makes one wonder if the government should be involved in education at all if it requires constant exceptions to constitutional rights, that essentially the elements of running a school are in contention with the laws of the government and the rights of the students. I guess we just have to wait for the SCOTUS decision to remedy the split.

> This is very interesting. I guess they mean any off campus rights

No, they mean any Constitutional rights.

> Many rights are clearly restricted on campus, including school events at any location.

To the extent that that is true, that’s not a waiver by the student. But while it allows considerable regulation, the limitation on free speech on schools is quite narrow.

> Yet we have plenty of laws which are also not strictly defined and they are upheld (so much for lenity).

Lenity is not absence of strict definition of what is prohibited, but government’s power to not fully prosecutr what is prohibited. Strict definition is about the boundary of what may be enforced.

> They do mention a test of whether the person can be punished off campus for the speech. They only investigate this from the standpoint of the team being "the government". They do not look into whether private teams punish students for similar issues, and thus if the school team requires the same customary practices to effectively function.

That’s because the government has no inherent right to do what private entities may do that trumps Constitutional limits on government. If cheerleading teams need things that exceed the legitimate power of government to function (which I doubt, but whatever), then the solution is for the government not to run cheerleading teams, not for thr government to assume unconstitutional powers.

> Essentially the same reasoning that schools are allowed to restrict other rights in the classroom - that they need the customary authority that comes with the implementation of activity (school, team, etc) because being restricted to only the role of government would make them an ineffective institution.

That is not the basis for the (fairly narrow, in the case of free speech) power of government to regulate conduct in schools beyond what it can do in other contexts.

Wow, brilliant reply. I owe you for this one!

"No, they mean any Constitutional rights"

So knives and guns aren't banned? Drug searches without consent are ok?

"To the extent that that is true, that’s not a waiver by the student. But while it allows considerable regulation, the limitation on free speech on schools is quite narrow."

It seems quite broad based on the case laws they cite. It can restrict vulgarity, imaginary stories containing violence, prayer, and basically any topic they feel would cause a disturbance, which is a lot.

"Lenity is not absence of strict definition of what is prohibited, but government’s power to not fully prosecutr what is prohibited. Strict definition is about the boundary of what may be enforced."

If a law is defined using vague terms, then any ambiguity is supposed to benefit the defendant. The reasoning is that you can't expect people to abide by a law that is unknowable because it lacks a clear definition.

"then the solution is for the government not to run cheerleading teams, not for thr government to assume unconstitutional powers."

"That is not the basis for the (fairly narrow, in the case of free speech) power of government to regulate conduct in schools beyond what it can do in other contexts."

Exactly my point about education in the previous comment. These exceptions to rights that are necessary for the school to function, by your own argument, make it so that the government should not be running schools at all.

You reference these narrow restrictions from previous rulings. On what basis where they created? Not on some Constitutional text, but on the court deciding those rights can be restricted. So too could they rule in this case and cement a restriction that was not challenged before.

"That is not the basis for the (fairly narrow, in the case of free speech) power of government to regulate conduct in schools beyond what it can do in other contexts."

Then what is? I see nothing in the Constitution allowing for those restrictions on this right. They were manufactured by the court through common law customs/beliefs and cemented in case law.

This is way beyond my knowledge but I found an interesting article about the constitutionality of a US law regulating firearms in schools. It’s not entirely relevant to this subject but it helped me understand a bit more of the how/why of these sorts of decisions.

https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article...

Political correctness isn't about taste or decency, it's about control through pseudo-offense, imaginary "victims," and "microaggressions." This is manipulative browbeating by implicitly threatening people's standing in society by telling them what to think, what words are "correct" now, and what topics they can't talk about anymore, even as jokes. Oh and now, let's retroactively rehash the past, tell people how horrible they were in the present, and punish them too. Keep looking for people to punish, excoriate, banish, and crucify until there's no one left. After all, no crime is too small to not earn the instant death penalty.

George Carlin (RIP), Bill Maher, Jerry Seinfeld... sadly, I think they lost the war because there weren't and aren't enough comedians with enormous lower-middle orbs (female orbs run a little higher) to stand up or manspread against the tides of Karens, booers (that's not "boogers," although that would work too), shouters, and the rest of the heckler safety-pin brigade mob.

There is validity in the idea that off campus speech on social media can interfere with on campus activities, but I think the slope is far to slippery to allow the government (yes public schools are the government) to extend to all students and all times because social media posts can disrupt the learning environments. Kids already check their constitutional rights at the door of the school, and they can regulate their own platforms, but there is no way the courts can allow schools unmitigated power to rear children on behalf of the government 24/7 in all mediums of expression.

The bullying argument by the school is rich, because that is exactly what these adults are doing, they are bullying a kid into keeping quiet about the schools behavior.

Sure kids can be bullied on social media off campus but the school doesn’t need to regulate that, the law provides remedies, and if the bullying extends from an off campus social media post to an on campus violation then the school can step in at that time and punish that behavior.

It's one thing for a school to exercise editorial control over a student paper (previous SCOTUS case), but it's quite another for them to try to control student speech outside of school.

A lot of public schools in the US are miserable places with dumb and often hostile adults. I agree that they are the ones bullying the student here - I hope the school loses.

They can definitely regulate the use of the word fuck in the school or in class, I am fine with that, but I know others that would disagree.

You could definitely change the facts just slightly, where a student posts something on social media during school hours while on campus...then is it fair game for the school to regulate/punish? I have to admit myself I’d want to know the context, but it really shouldn’t matter, either yes they can regulate the speech or no they can’t.

I think SCOTUS cherry picked this case, so they wouldn’t have to take a case with more compelling facts like a social media post while at school by a student bullying another student. Then again the justices are older, and disconnected from a generation that grew up connected to social media.

I'm glad they're cherry-picking. They're more likely to get it right, and it's best if they move slowly. Ten years from now they can take a case from a student who will have been sent to detention for cursing her teacher's parentage during class.

On the one hand:

> The coaches said Levy’s snap violated the team rules she had agreed to, including showing respect, avoiding “foul language and inappropriate gestures,” and a strict policy against “any negative information regarding cheerleading, cheerleaders, or coaches placed on the Internet.”

On the other hand:

> Some cheerleaders complained about Levy’s message, and the coaches decided to suspend her from the squad for a year.

This entire thing could've been avoided with a reasonable response. Like a reminder about the team rules. Maybe a one week suspension. A full year suspension is insane.

That said, she obviously had no choice but to agree to the rules, so that's no defense against a First Amendment violation.

> That said, she obviously had no choice but to agree to the rules, so that's no defense against a First Amendment violation.

Not sure what you mean by this, cheerleading is optional, right?

So is advanced math, using the library, and so on.

Even better yet the issue could be avoided if the school did not make up and therefore have to enforce bad rules in the first place. When the people disregard bureaucratic rules, more often than not it is the rules themselves that are the problem.

I stopped reading the article when I realized the student was 14 at the time of the post.

Anything posted by someone at that age, especially on a temporary medium such as snapchat, should have an implicit "for entertainment purposes only" label on it along with a EULA that says that unless it might cause immediate danger to someone else that it should be treated as satire.

But the case is about a school punishing her for it. I mean, sure, YOU can choose to ignore this 14 year old as irrelevant satire, but the school can't. Taking kids' communication seriously and teaching them how to interact with the broader world in a civil way is literally what schools are for.

And that includes incentives like punishing them when they act like an asshole. The question is whether this mandate schools have (which we all agree they have!) extends outside school grounds, and how far.

Now, maybe it does and maybe it doesn't (I for one am a little conflicted here and don't have a clear opinion). But whether it does or not has nothing to do with whether we should take student speech "seriously".

That's clearly inconsistent. You don't let 14 year olds vote, drink, drive, or own a gun. They are expected to make mistakes. Chastising them for a private comment made outside of school is inconsistent with their obligations.

The problem is you have these dying institutions riddled with power hungry sycophants who feel empowered with this wave of cancel culture.

> but the school can't

Oh yes it can. And should.

> The question is whether this mandate schools have (which we all agree they have!)

No we don't.

It's literally the first amendment. Student was exercising her first amendment rights. School has a right to tell her that they don't agree with the opinions she expressed but certainly not the authority to punish her.

Else it's a slippery slope [0] [1] [2]

[0] https://nypost.com/2020/08/06/georgia-students-punished-over...

[1] https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/08/us/georgia-teen-photo-crowded...

[2] https://www.popsugar.com/family/Student-Punished-Sharing-Sch...

Again, if she said this in school it would be an irrelevancy and no one would have heard about it or care. Clearly the school is empowered to punish students for their speech, period. And SCOTUS isn't remotely interested in trying to draw a line there.

The question here is under what circumstances student speech can be regulated, not whether.

> Taking kids' communication seriously and teaching them how to interact with the broader world in a civil way is literally what schools are for

In no way is that the original or even modern purpose of schooling

It’s mind boggling to me that an adult human being (who was once 14!) can hold such a ridiculous point of view. You must have simply forgotten what it was like...

The behavior of this young child warrants (at most!) a sit down with an authority figure to discuss the problematic elements. If this wasn’t her first lapse of judgment, maybe hand down a temporary suspension from the team or something similar.

The idea that this fiasco is somehow helping this kid is... I mean... come on now.

What is happening to us? I’m not even old and I feel like that old man yelling at people to get off my lawn.

As someone who grew up before the Internet perhaps I have a less than optimal view of the issue. I think that in the case of non-threatening speech, the school has no business disciplining students for off campus speech.

Even in the case of threatening speech, I’m not sure the school is a role. That should be left up to local law enforcement.

You want armed law enforcement officers to show up to a 14 year old's house because she posts "b*tch" on every IM from her nemesis? (and yes - that would be considered cyberbullying in many schools)

That's a really bad idea.

>You want armed law enforcement officers to show up to a 14 year old's house because she posts "b*tch" on every IM from her nemesis?

I don't think that counts as "threatening speech" in terms that the parent comment was attempting to describe it. This feels more like cyberbullying, which I agree on with you, cops shouldn't be dealing with this kind of stuff.

In this context, I think "threatening speech" refers more to stuff like an actual threat of imminent danger to people, like a bomb threat or other things of similar nature.

Cyberbulling and threatening is not the same thing. And I think its clear from the OP, that "threatening" speech would be voicing intent to do violence. Yes, law enforcement should be the ones to handle those situations.

What if it's not phrased as discipline? What if they said "This speech is an example of your character and we'd rather not have you on our squad." The assumption is (as someone pointed out up thread) that there's no right to be on the squad; that you can (as the joke goes) be fired or not hired at anytime for no reason but not any reason.

I would reply that the adults in that case should demonstrate their own character by recognizing that teenagers are humans with emotions¹ who get frustrated and make mistakes. And that a mistake that doesn't really harm anyone (an F said in conversation with a friend) merits a discussion in the worst, not a dismissal dropped like a bomb.

---

¹Maybe even more so than the adults.

Although to be exact I would not even call this any "mistake". It is simply human. But I do understand that others might consider it to be so.

Having worked in several youth organizations and youth sports for the past 30 years, I bet what actually happened is this kid has been "problematic", the adults have been trying to do right by the kid, and this was the final straw. I've seen that happen. The act resulting in a kid getting dismissed from an activity in and of itself isn't egregious when considered in isolation. It's all the other stuff going on preceding that act that caused the response. Obviously I don't know the details of this particular case, but it wouldn't surprise if that is what happened here. It's typically the way such things go.

Sorry, not buying it. If the kid had a pattern of problematic behavior they could have said that she was being dismissed for behavior that took place at team practices or events. But they didn't. They are saying that it was for the Snapchat rant. If they had something else, they could have avoided the court fight.

I would place more money on her being of lower socio-economic class than her peers. These "zero-tolerance" policies are rarely applied equally across class.

This is why the phrase "problematic" is useless and should be removed from the human vocabulary. Are you suggesting the teenager was difficult to deal with - or actively breaking rules? Was she being a bully or just not fitting in well?

You can't just label someone "problematic" and get rid of them for a minor infraction without having to support that label with something meaningful - otherwise the behavior is arbitrary.

Exactly. Isn't that the whole point of free-speech?

"Free speech" does not mean free of consequences.

Free Speech precisely means freedom from consequences. That phrase is perhaps the most insidious phrase that is often repeated on the internet. To believe that free speech should be met with "consequences" if it crosses some line is illiberal, and immoral. The principle of free speech is one we all ought to attempt to live up to, and that principle goes far beyond what the first amendment may protect.

Take that phrase to its logical extent. Should certain speech mean imprisonment? Should it mean execution by the government? Alienation and banishment from society? Attacked and lynched by a mob? What about political affiliation? Philosphical or religious beliefs? Those are all consequences that have, and are used against people who exercise their natural rights. Those are the natural outcomes of limiting free speech. Limiting free speech is the end of a free, liberal society.

In the context of the US Constitution, it only means that the government can't suppress your speech (with certain narrow exclusions). This doesn't mean that private companies can't muzzle you at their will or you can't make yourself a pariah by being publicly hateful.

In this case, it's precisely a government institution suppressing speech.

Yes the constitution, but that still goes against the principle. In the Scarlet Letter, the main character is made a pariah for having sex. I think we can all agree that is morally wrong, on the part of the town that ostracize them. To banish someone for being against your ideas, or principles, is inherently to try and be an authoritarian. To say that "if you do not follow this ideal, I will do what I can to destroy you". It is an illiberal idea. liberalism is comfortable with competing ideas because ideas stand on their own.

> This doesn't mean that private companies can't muzzle you at their will

But that's a _public_ school, right?

This may be a reason why we've been served the private "charter" school Kool-Aid for a decade now... after all, nearly all discourse has been moved to private online platforms.

Are you saying that I can't make any sort of negative decision about you no matter what you say, or I'm violating the principle of free speech?

> Alienation and banishment from society?

I literally have to still be friends with you, or I'm oppressing you? What are we using language for anyway, if we have to ignore it?

You don't have to associate with anyone as a private individual if you don't want to. In the present case, the school district is an arm of the state and cannot punish a student for constitutionally protected speech.

> I can't make any sort of negative decision

Are you saying that you believe that any negative consequence at all, against someone, should be allowed for their speech?

Because if the answer is "No, there are some consequences that I do not think should be allowed, against speech", then you believe that freedom of speech does mean freedom from some consequences.

I'm going to cherry pick your slippery slope argument:

> Should certain speech mean imprisonment?

Yes. Credible death or terroristic threats in 1st world countries can mean you can go to jail. Society has decided that people don't have the "natural rights" to threaten to murder other people.

>Free Speech precisely means freedom from consequences. That phrase is perhaps the most insidious phrase that is often repeated on the internet. To believe that free speech should be met with "consequences" if it crosses some line is illiberal, and immoral.

I take it, then, you are against existing laws against slander, libel, fraud, harassment and incitement to violence?

And that if I were to try convince your family and coworkers that you were a pedophile, or of some other scandalous rumor, you wouldn't do anything because it would be illiberal and immoral of you to demand that my speech has consequences?

> slander, libel, fraud, harassment and incitement to violence?

They're not saying that what speech qualifies as free speech has no exceptions whatsoever[0]. They're saying that you can't do a end run around the entire concept of free speech by laundering your enforcement under the vague heading of "consequences", when those consequences are a result of your enforcement.

0: It should have as few exceptions as possible, of course, but if nothing else you shouldn't be able to get away with murder by claiming that the nerve impulses to your trigger finger are free speech, and that shouldn't be a property of nerve impulses versus other ways of transmitting information.

>They're not saying that free speech has no exceptions whatsoever.

That is literally what they're saying - "Free Speech precisely means freedom from consequences" precisely means free speech has no exceptions whatsoever, because any possible exception by definition leads to a consequence which restricts speech.

Had they said free speech should have as few exceptions as possible, they would have.

> because any possible exception by definition leads to a consequence which restricts speech.

Sorry, should have been more explicit - edited to clarify that I was talking about exceptions to what qualifies as free speech in the first place, not exceptions to what consequences constitute restriction.

Ah, this trite argument. It doesn't even apply when it comes to public services or the government, as is the case here, in which action is being taken by a public school.

Ever see the documentary Kids For Cash? Happened 30 minutes away from this school.

Anyone else find it ridiculously coy that the Washington Post censors the word "fuck" in the quote that is the crux of the case. I'm sure the readers are all adults who can handle them accurately reporting the quote. Kids aren't reading the Washington Post Courts & Law section.

If you don't want to swear in your newspaper, you shouldn't have to swear in your newspaper to seem "adult." People reading the Courts & Law section are also old enough to know what the fuck "f--k" means.

They wouldn't be swearing in their paper, they'd be accurately reporting a phrase that is the subject of a Supreme Court case. It's not about seeming adult, it's about treating readers as adults who are capable of reading some naughty words in reported speech without being scandalized.

> Kids aren't reading the Washington Post Courts & Law section.

I wouldn't be so sure of that.

I remember as a kid we were occasionally given homework to find an interesting current events newspaper story and bring it to class to read out loud. I remember going over all the news sections when looking for a good story, not just the sections you would have expected an ~9 year old to be interested in.

I remember once finding a story in the international news section about a legislator in some other well known country that all of us kids would have heard of who had yelled during a session that some other legislator was a son of bitch, and then a fistfight broke out between them.

When I brought that and read it aloud to the class and got to say "son of a bitch" in front of everyone and not get in trouble for it was the highlight of my week, and earned the admiration of all the other boys in class.

>I remember once finding a story in the international news section about a legislator in some other well known country that all of us kids would have heard of who had yelled during a session that some other legislator was a son of bitch, and then a fistfight broke out between them.

Was it Australia by any chance?

We were asked to read this article this morning in US Government actually!

I'd say that anyone capable of discussing this case and its implications is capable of reading the word "fuck" uncensored without being corrupted any further than by reading "f--k"

Agreed

"Fuck school, fuck softball, fuck cheer, fuck everything."

Wait, that's it?!

Yup!

There was a case of a student making a joking fake myspace for a Principal that landed the student in jail for a year and a half, happened half an hour away from this place.

This is the part that makes me absolutely furious. This is the most innocent rant a teenage girl could possibly post.

Every 2nd teenager I know used to make statements like these on a daily basis.

I said roughly the same thing this morning over coffee.

> I know a man who is rock hard – he's firm in his pants, he's firm in his shirt, his character is firm – but most of all, his belief in you the students of Bethel, is firm. Jeff Kuhlman is a man who takes his point and pounds it in. If necessary, he'll take an issue and nail it to the wall. He doesn't attack things in spurts – he drives hard, pushing and pushing until finally – he succeeds. Jeff is a man who will go to the very end – even the climax, for each and every one of you. So please vote for Jeff Kuhlman, as he'll never come between us and the best our school can be.

That's the student body election speech that was ruled not to be protected in _Fraser_, one of the main precedents in this case.

That speech was given in person, in the school building, where other students were required to attend, during school hours.

This speech occurred on snapchat, outside of the school building, outside of school hours, with no requirement that anybody pay any attention at all.

That speech is funny tho.

There's a gigantic difference, a hard distinction, so big it hurts, between prohibiting disruptive, norm-violating speech on campus within a school function (a central focus of the _Fraser_ decision), and prohibiting speech outside of school on social media. At school, the school administration is acting in loco parentis in regulating the behavior and speech of students. There are limits to how much it can regulate garden variety free speech, particularly non-disruptive speech or political opinions, but it can regulate it.

The nature of the speech is different. In _Fraser_, the language was specifically crafted sexual innuendo. In this cheerleader case, the language in question on snapchat was a garden variety swearword (f-) expressing frustration, not specifically sexual in context. Every high schooler, every middle schooler knows that word. A substantial part of the decision in _Fraser_ revolved around the audience being minors and how the sexual language was potentially damaging to them.

I think even that _Fraser_ decision was wrong... I agree with Stevens's dissent that it's not the school's or a federal court's business to decide what rhetorical sexual innuendo is or isn't damaging to minors unless it's clearly interfering with the "educational process" (a phrase mentioned in the relevant disciplinary rules, not some artificial scope-restriction Stevens made up), or unusually disruptive. The cited record mentions school staff opining that the assembly was not substantially more disruptive than other assemblies, despite some embarrassment and obscene mimicry of the innuendo. A student assembly isn't sufficiently connected with the educational process to merit the extra censorship you'd expect to be enforced in a classroom, which is what the cited school's disciplinary code contemplates.

As pointed out elsewhere, the cheerleader's signed "agreement" not to disparage the team or classmates as a requirement for being on a team is not likely to be valid for a public school. The fact that the school can more strictly regulate speech when a student is actively representing the school at an event, or in a classroom, is not relevant here (or in _Fraser_, for that matter). If school staff believe special behavioral criteria for attendance or membership at the school or on a school team is necessary, they should quit and join a private school where that kind of thing flies.

https://archive.is/qZqEV

If I was in charge(and I should be, you should all appoint me dictator and get it over with already) we'd have a common sense solution to this problem. It's obvious what to do.

There are two kinds of speech- expressive speech and active speech. Expressive speech can be a rant, a dialogue, swearing, etc. You can call people the N word. That's all expressive. it is you expressing your opinions and your views. You have an absolute right to that and nobody should be able to challenge you on this.

Active speech is speech that seeks to push an action agenda or is supporting actions. When you talk about what you are doing -and- what you are doing is offensive, then your speech is an extension of your offensive actions and does not stand on it's own. As a result, it may not be protected, depending on if your actions are offensive, harmful, or even if someone just doesn't like them.

For example, if an employee says "i hate working here" and you terminate them for that, then you have violated their free speech. if instead they say "bathroom strike #notworking to protest horrible job" and you terminate them for saying that, then you have not violated their free speech, you have acted upon the information presented in their words to respond to their actions or planned actions.

Simple as

Maybe it's just me, maybe it's just a snapchat "feature", but one of the first things that struck me was the idea that this young woman sent the rant out to something like 250 people, of which a nonneglible portion was from her school (and had additional ties to the cheer group).

Comparing this to my own experiences - I know I said plenty of things in high school which would have landed me in hot waters had they reached the wrong ears. But they didn't, and while there was certainly some luck involved, there was also discretion at play. I kept my personal opinions personal and limited to other individuals or groups that I could trust.

So I guess my question is - does discretion play a role? Is there a difference if I whisper to a friend that I'd love to kick somebody's ass or if I post the same idea to a public social media space where it can be seen by a larger audience? What if I yell it out real loud during a break? What then?

It will be fascinating to see how this case plays out, as I can see valid arguments on both sides of the table. Free speech is key, but if we want schools to have any chance of succeeding there must be a way to protect students who are being unfairly targeted.

>...the Court held, 5–4, that the First Amendment does not prevent educators from suppressing student speech that is reasonably viewed as promoting illegal drug use at or across the street from a school-supervised event.

A better summary can be found at the wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahanoy_Area_School_District_v....

I'm trying to figure out a litmus test on how the content of what is said could make this justified or not.

Like if a football player got on snapchat and said that they hope they lose the game this coming Friday and that they intended to take actions that undermined the team, would they be justified in being kicked off the team? I think so.

Is there a similar line for cheerleading and did this cross it? I don't think so, but it's hard to say for sure. I don't know if it's possible to make a ruling that simultaneously defends the cheerleader's speech without also preventing the football coach from acting in this hypothetical situation.

I bet it's not even close.

The Roberts court loves free speech even in far more harmful forms - see Citizens United. They will be very wary of implications of "liberal" companies governing speech outside of work too.

This was a huge over reach by the school and now they're gonna lose big time.

What was her initial conflict with cheerleading team?

I think an unsubstantiated temper tantrum is a perfectly reasonable cause to suspend her from the team. The real cause for concern is their blanket policy against any form of criticism whether warranted or not:

It seems like they're justifying the suspension by saying something far more incriminating. What exactly are they trying to hide? A culture of undue pressure, bullying, maybe groping? Cheerleading has after all turned into quite a sexually suggestive form of entertainment.

The "cheer industry" is a incredible cesspool of dirty tricks and corporate malfeasance that would make the tech industry blush for shame.

https://www.commercialappeal.com/in-depth/news/2020/09/18/ch...

Yeah cheerleadeing is a scam

"Placed on the internet" is imprecise but my interpretation would be "posted in public on the internet/web". If Snapchat is equivalent to "placed on the internet" presumably so would be simply saying something to someone 1-on-1 in a voice-over-IP phone call.

Can a public school make participation in extracurriculars (often key to future college applications and thus your life/employment prospects) contingent on never even in a private context criticizing the school's management of said activities? That strikes me as an extremely expansive power open to all sorts of abuse, and almost certainly unconstitutional.

It has always seemed ridiculous to me that schools should have any role whatsoever in the off-campus activities of their students (assuming that the behavior didn't occur on or with school property[such as a school website], while the student was under the supervision of school employees[such as a field trip] or had any involved with any school resources). Aside from being unconstitutional, our schools are struggling to perform their basic core role - education. They should be spending all their resources on figuring out how to educate students at school instead of trying to police their out-of-school behavior. That's what parents are for.

It’s a bit disingenuous of the ACLU to claim that schools should stamp out cyber bullying and in the same breath claim that schools should have no influence on off campus activity. Guess what? The cyber bullying occurs off campus. And now, thanks to the ACLUs efforts, the bullying will be protected speech.

At least have a little honesty. The ACLU should be up front with their biases that they’re a civil liberties first organisation. They only care about those liberties, regardless of its effect on other matters. Don’t sit there claiming “yes we also care about cyber bullying” because your current work guts the only mechanism for curbing it.

I'm on the side where the kids should be able to say anything they want if the schools weren't in the picture. Fuck censorship, fuck prior restraint, and fuck schools prying into the personal lives of kids off-campus.

You can't shout fire in a crowded theater.

If she's told she represents a school-sponsored club 24/7 it's one thing to make them look bad by mixing her brand and their brand, but it's another to have it be a surprise banishment or some random school official telling her what she can and can't say to her friends or publicly.

Suspending this student for this action was a gross overreaction by the coach, and the AD / school administration should have stepped in to intervene before this reached the point of legal action.

It seems basically impossible to me that the Supreme Court will be able to draft a broad decision that anticipates and handles all cases gracefully. I feel like no matter how they rule, the result will be that schools will be prevented from using common sense on a case by case basis, and instead rely on some convoluted N-point test with a ton of unintended consequences.

> will be able to draft a broad decision that anticipates and handles all cases gracefully

does it have to? Can't it intentionally narrow down the scope of its decision? (which will of course give some push in one direction anyways, but leave stuff open instead of forcing specific criteria)

She made a side-deal to be on the team. Seems like they are litigating the validity of that deal and nothing more.

[The coaches said Levy’s snap violated the team rules she had agreed to, including showing respect, avoiding “foul language and inappropriate gestures,” and a strict policy against “any negative information regarding cheerleading, cheerleaders, or coaches placed on the Internet.”]

Can't say about legal rulings and precedent about free speech, but I can't remember it ever being okay to, for example, swear in front of teachers outside school. Especially in small enough towns, conduct outside of the school always came back to bite you in the ass since everyone would hear about everything. And I imagine social media has amplified this x1000.

It's not like students have a right to participate in particular high school extracurricular activities like sports, right? Could this case end up making varsity sports not allowed to cut players, or is the expectation just that they turn cuts/bans into another "nod and wink" thing where you just aren't chosen/stay benched?

It is only a Supreme Court preview because the school is a (local) government entity and that the coach is a government employee.

This event CAN STILL be “cancelled” with the same scenario if it were a private school instead of a government school.

First Amendment applies only to government entities and its employees.

Caveat!

> “Wherever student speech originates, schools should be able to treat students alike when their speech is directed at the school and imposes the same disruptive harms on the school environment.”

This reads like harm prevention rhetoric with a thin veil of authoritarianism.

It makes sense, as culturally the US is collapsing rapidly into a cesspool of nanny state authoritarianism in every possible manner. I can't figure out why anybody would want to live here, it's an increasingly despicable, suffocating culture. We're starting to see the first hints of an American firewall on expression and speech. It has gotten drastically worse over the past 10-15 years.

Every time I watch a movie made before approximately 2010, I laugh about the fact that almost no good movie (any IMDB decent rated movie) made prior to then could be made again today, due to the authoritarian SJW cancel culture, everyone must be protected from being offended at all times. Padded intellectual prisons for all.

The biggest hint of the US intellectual infantile collapse and how far along it is, is that "hate" speech is increasingly taken serious as a notion. Anyone that refers to "love" and "hate" as intellectual concepts that should govern human rights or speech, is a terrifying and dangerous mental infant. Hate is a particularly vague term to use to govern speech, which is the entire point, so the people in control can decide what can be said and what can't be (including restricting criticism directed at those in power; restrictions all authoritarians will always pursue).

I'm wondering about how this impacts criticising the school. If the school does X, can the school punish students for discussing this action and criticising it? Feels like this allows schools to crack down on criticism.

I'm lucky no permanent electronic record of the crap I said as a 14 year exist. I feel bad for kids today, I really do. You should be able to say the odd swear word without ending up at the Supreme court...

> The case will determine whether schools have the right to punish pupils for what they say off-campus.

In the old days, we could separate our "school life" and "off-campus life" into neat little spheres. But these days we live our lives digitally. In this new world the spheres are not as separate as they used to be. The student may have typed the message while off campus, but her classmates may see the message while on-campus. So there is no clear geographic boundaries, and there are no "spheres" really.

The same issue appears when a high school teacher publishes nude pictures of herself. She may have done it while off campus, but the students who see the picture may not see that as a separate sphere.

In the digital world there are no distances. Everyone is everywhere at the same time.

I bet one of the other cheerleaders mom's took her rant as fodder for an agenda to move her own daughter up the rank in the cheer squad. Or schalorship ranks and pressured the school to take action.

Assuming you have a kid old enough for a smartphone, is there software available that a parent can use to disable wifi but allow roaming data?

(It's much harder to argue for your kid if they use the schools network).

What's more amazing (reading the case) is that the school was losing at each step and still was insisting on wasting government on appeals.

Willfully bankrupting the school out of mere ego and hubris!

it's in her interest to be banned from cheerleading anyway. so many better sports or other things to do with that time. I don't get why cheerleading is so popular. a "sport" that just sexualizes little girls, parading them at half times. if there was ever a sexist tradition that doesn't die, it's this one -- women training to "cheer" male teams where cheer means doing sexy dances at half time to entertain the men drinking beer in the audience

>that is not reasonably interpreted as bearing the school’s imprimatur

Schools are involved in so many things, I wonder how anyone could interpret that.

If the school uses public funds, isn't she protected by the first amendment?

how was there such a gap in the law that it has to go all the way to the supreme court to resolve this?

My experience as a student in a US public school a dozen or so years ago was that it functioned as a borderline fascist institution, to an extent that I think would be quite surprising to the rest of the world. Every day began with the Pledge of Allegiance recited in the classroom, facing the US flag, hand on chest. Permission was required to use the restroom during class. Class changes were anounced by automated bells in the hallway, at which time students stampede to their next class within 6 minutes, including any necessary pit stops, such as a restroom break. This is high school, where students typically attend until 18.

Schools loom so large in students' lives; and when school attendance is compulsory for all, and public school the only option for many; and when these institutions so easily sacrifice respect for individuality in favor of keeping order inexpensively; I am all for ensuring students can enjoy their full speach rights when they come home at the end of the day.

As I'm not American, this whole cheerleading thing feels very weird to me. It's weird to see the role of boys to play sports while the girls cheer doing elaborate choreographies.

Does anyone else feels it weird from a different cultural framing?

There’s also a band in the stands that marches in formation on the field at halftime.

In fact, the primary band program at my high school seemingly only existed to fulfill this role. I ultimately dropped it because I was sick of doing unpaid work for the football program outside school hours.

I'm pretty sure the extreme emphasis on marching-compatible instruments in high school music programs is entirely due to this, in fact. I wonder how many 17-year-olds play the tuba or trombone or clarinet in Europe, versus the US, for instance? In an ideal world I'd see all non-specialist students at that level learning piano/keyboard, or maybe guitar or ukulele. Something with good general utility, acceptable when played solo even at not-great skill levels, and relatively easy to reach a point where you can lead a sing-along. Nice, physical, evident mapping of notes and theory to the instrument, too, unlike wind and brass instruments.

I would guess that fewer kids in EU play instrument. And when they do, it is either classic or self taught hobby. Here, basically you can't start officially in high school. You are deemed too old.

No one cares that you play, unless you are from family that actively encourages it.

cheerleading is like nurses and teachers. male cheerleaders do exist, they are just a small minority. we are arguing for more male teachers and nurses, and we could just as well be arguing that there should be more male cheerleaders.

Back when I was in High School there were a handful of male cheerleaders. Their job was to fling the girls so high in the air that they could break bones if not successfully caught.

I'm an American and I've always found it very weird.

How about modelling? It's dominated by women while men are relegated to the proverbial shadows.

Haven't you watched Zoolander?

Afaik, cheerleading is very physically demanding. In terms of strength, agility and how many injuries happen as a result. They also have competitions that are quite serious.

As in, if you refuse to accept that it is real physical effort kind of like gymnastic or dance, both of which counts a sports, then maybe you should look again.

I'm just wondering how it reinforces stereotypes.

So will the SCOTUS uphold the "not a cheerocracy, it's a cheertatership" rule?

The reason the kids are penalized is not because it disrupts the school. It's because it destroys their authority. Schools cling desperately to authority because they are unwilling or unable to use different methods to teach.

While I support the general proposition that students should not be punished for off-campus speech, there is more to this case. My daughter is a cheerleader, a voluntary association within the school, which has a strict code of conduct. There are rules against public intoxication, sexual promiscuity, and disparagement of the school. So, it is a case of a student violating a voluntary association's code of conduct and being removed from that association. I think this is distinguished from a normal school/student free speech relationship. I look forward to reading the court's opinion.

They actually have rules against "sexual promiscuity"? What do those rules look like and how are they enforced? Is it just a dress code, or do they actually discipline students for being "promiscuous".

I can't help but wonder if the football team also has such rules

If anything, sexual promiscuity is how you get respected and are more likely to play in games.

Look, I realize there can be a double standard, but please, this is a bit much.

As someone who played on the football team, you are more likely to play in games by being bigger, stronger, faster, and more intense than the other dudes at your position. Coaches give no consideration to anything beyond that.

From what I personally have seen and heard from other people, football teams either have no such rules or those rules are not enforced about 100% of the time.

> how are they enforced?

I can guarantee these rules are not enforced uniformly across socioeconomic class.

Is this voluntary association supported with public funds? Managed by public employees?

If you go with the "voluntary association" defense, it is just a different flavor of lawsuit. The requirement for association means giving up your free speech rights, which a high school cheer team has no business requiring.

I question the reason why the state has any right to make rules about sexual promiscuity but whatever

My understanding is that the first amendment prohibits federal and state governments (and therefore public schools) from placing restrictions on free speech in the first place. Therefore, parts of the code of conduct are unconstitutional and so unenforceable.

It's irrelevant whether it's voluntary or not, it matters whether it's an establishment of the state.

No. Schools are obviously allowed to limit speech inside the classroom. The question is whether that right extends outside.

I was responding to the above assertion that the voluntary nature of the program is relevant, in regards to the situation in the parent comment. I wasn't referring to the case in the top-level post.

Actually one of the issues in the case was whether she waived her 1st Am rights by voluntarily joining the team.

https://casetext.com/case/us-v-levy-22

Did you post the wrong link? Looks like that's about a case regarding distribution of heroin in the 80s?

I have not seen any analysis that suggests that the school district has used that argument, but I'd be interesting in reading it.

The analysis here[0] (which is the most detailed I've seen) suggests that Mahanoy is arguing that this off-campus speech is causing on-campus harm.

[0]: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/cert/20-255

Oops, sorry. Here is the correct link.

https://casetext.com/case/bl-v-mahanoy-area-sch-dist-2

In Part II B. iii Section B: "B.L. Did Not Waive Her Free Speech Rights", the court discusses the defense of waiver for voluntary activities with a separate code of conduct.

"The School District next argues that by agreeing to certain school and team rules, B.L. waived her First Amendment right to post the “fuck cheer” snap. We disagree."

Ah interesting. Looks like that claim was pretty strongly rejected though, as it should be.

I'm reading she essentially agreed to a contract in the form of the "team rules" and then violated those rules for which she was held accountable. This isn't a free speech issue, it is a contractual issue.

You need to be 18 in PA to legally sign a binding contract as best I can tell. https://law.jrank.org/pages/11848/Legal-Ages.html

Contract law is not ultimate. If your contract violates other laws, or is missing elements of a valid contract, then it could be invalidated.

Super iffy for two general reasons:

1: She could not legally sign that contract 2: The cheerleading team is ultimately an extension of the government (as it is part of a government institution).

By literal means, the state is punishing someone for what is ultimately private, off-campus speech. A lawyer with goals in life would see that as a case worth fighting.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com