Jane Coleman at Legal Insurrection covered our case, Leroy v. Livingston Manor School District, in which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit ruled in favor of a Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute (HLLI) client, reversing a lower court’s decision and affirming that public schools cannot punish students for off-campus speech, even if the speech is controversial.
On appeal, Leroy’s lawyers at the Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute argued that the school’s actions violated Supreme Court precedents in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (1969) and, more recently, Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L. (2021).
In Mahanoy, the Court held a school violated the First Amendment when it punished a disgruntled student for her vulgar, off-campus social media posts cursing out the school after she failed to make the varsity cheerleading team.
Last week, the Second Circuit sided with Leroy. “[W]e cannot accept the contention that in today’s world, a social media post made off-campus is equivalent to speech on campus,” Judge Barrington Parker wrote on behalf of the federal appeals court.
Read more at Legal Insurrection.