U.S. Supreme Court Takes Up Cheerleader Free Speech Dispute

The U.S. Supreme Court will consider the extent to which public schools can discipline students for off-campus speech.

On Friday, the justices agreed to hear an appeal by a Pennsylvania school district over its suspension of a high school cheerleader who posted obscenities about her cheer program to social media after not making varsity.

The Philadelphia-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit found the posting was protected by the First Amendment even though it was “crude, rude, and juvenile.”

The Third Circuit noted that the Supreme Court’s landmark 1969 ruling in Tinker v. Des Moines Indep. Cmty. Sch. Dist. made clear that students “do not ‘shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.’”

But the Tinker decision established a narrow exception for speech that would “materially and substantially interfere with the requirements of appropriate discipline in the operation of the school.” The Third Circuit said Tinker doesn’t apply to so-called off-campus speech.

It was careful to note that on- vs. off-campus speech doesn’t depend on brick and mortar boundaries, but instead on the “extent to which schools control or sponsor the forum or the speech.”

There wasn’t a substantial enough connection in this case to the school environment to allow administrators to punish the student.

The case is B.L. v. Mahanoy Area Sch. Dist., U.S., No. 20-255.