School District Sued By ACLU Over Student's Free Speech Rights 466
An anonymous reader writes "The ACLU is suing Minnewaska Area Schools and Pope County, according to this article in the StarTribune. At issue: school administrators and a sheriff's deputy forced a girl to hand over login information to her Facebook and email accounts, after she posted on Facebook that she 'hated' a school hall monitor who had been 'mean' to her, and cursed in a separate Facebook comment because someone reported her. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages and an order that would restrain school officials from attempts to regulate or discipline students based on speech made outside of school hours and off school property."
What can happen to a naughty little girl... (Score:4, Informative)
Someday we'll end up with this. Keep in mind shit like this has happened before:
A few years after the WW-II a young teenage girl called Erika Riemann defaced the moustache on picture of Stalin at school in then soviet occupied Germany. She got ratted out and then they sent her to Sachsenhausen, a nazi concentration camp the soviets had reactivated. She spent 8 years there where she was continously brutally raped by the guards who knocked her front teeth out in one episode.
Re:What about the parents? (Score:1, Informative)
That's in Spanish dumbass. Sort of like how in English we call Germans Germans rather than the more appropriate term. But don't let me stop your bigotry.
Re:What about the parents? (Score:5, Informative)
They're idiots. In a national context the term is American for people that have citizenship in the US. Despite what bigots from other parts of the super continent might think, there's rarely if ever a legitimate reason for using American in a different context.
Considering Mexicans are citizens of Los Estados Unidos de Mexico (aka United States of Mexico), and Canadians are citizens of a place called Canada (formerly the Dominion of Canada, it stands to reason that citizens of the United States of America would be referred to as Americans.
Re:More Information Please. (Score:5, Informative)
I have to disagree a bit here. I had similar issues and I was jumped by five boys after school one day. I fought back out of sheer terror and ended up putting two of them in the hospital.
They nor anyone else in the school ever bothered me again.
The only way to deal with bullies is to hurt them badly enough that they're too afraid to come back.
Re:What about the parents? (Score:1, Informative)
"USAn" is internet shorthand for "citizen of the USA". /. and yet are unaware of the Internet propensity for abbreviations?
Are you saying: 1: there is no such thing as a citizen of the USA, or 2: you are posting on
Re:What about the parents? (Score:4, Informative)
Legal dangers? Students have limited rights when it comes to the first amendment in the U.S.:
* http://articles.cnn.com/2007-06-25/justice/free.speech_1_principal-deborah-morse-banner-case-school-policy/2?_s=PM:LAW [cnn.com]
* Some public schools feel they need to the decide what students wear, public uniforms. I know my school tried to enforce uniforms after a suicide threat by a kid who brought a knife into school and after seeing this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Epeo8Pfm1xM [youtube.com] . They just made us tuck in our shirts when the district and the parents refused to pay for uniforms.
* Webcam monitoring was already attempted: http://articles.cnn.com/2010-02-20/justice/laptop.suit_1_webcam-district-court-laptop?_s=PM:CRIME [cnn.com]
* And requesting social media passwords aren't unheard of considering other things: http://redtape.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/06/10585353-govt-agencies-colleges-demand-applicants-facebook-passwords [msn.com]
Requesting passwords seems to be well within the gray area where a non-timid district would be willing to make a power grab, and hope to gain such abilities. The gov is brushing up against warrantless cellphone searches (http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/03/obama-admin-wants-warrantless-access-to-cell-phone-location-data.ars?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss), so an organization tasked with keeping our children safe from even themselves could easily make the argument to sympathetic members of the public that they need this power.
Actually, reading the article I see that last statement is a bit truer. They brought in law enforcement to force a hand over of information without a warrant. The Superintendent's response to the lawsuit: [quote]"We're taken aback by it," he said.[/quote]. Worrying about the legality didn't seem to even cross their minds it seems.
The part that has me tweaked is they did this. She's twelve. Facebook, last I checked, requires you to be thirteen. They had a perfectly jerkwad path to take to get her off/limit her Facebook activities already if they could get the company to comply, and possibly a lawsuit they could win if Facebook didn't.
Re:What about the parents? (Score:3, Informative)
Don't be silly. The speech and behavior rules in a school certainly DO distinguish between staff, students, and visitors. And the staff part usually differentiates further, between those who hold professional certification and those who don't (i.e., teachers and custodians).
IANAL, but in case anyone cares, courts have already ruled on this quite a few times, and the most common test on whether the school can discipline students for out-of-school acts is: whether the act could be reasonably expected to cause a "substantial disruption" of the educational mission of the school.
Having no other information to go on this case does not seem likely to rise to that level.
Re:What about the parents? (Score:5, Informative)
(Reposting a comment I have also posted below...because it's relevant to your comment. Sorry for dupe-ing.)
I'm a member of a Local School Council in a neighborhood elementary school in Chicago Public Schools. I heard of a kid (7th grade) that was punished in the school (suspension, possible expulsion) for bullying remarks made on Facebook--stuff he posted outside of school hours, off school grounds, and on his own computer. (He basically called some other kid 'gay' and threatened to beat him up, swore a bunch, etc. It was nasty stuff.) I wondered how the school was able to discipline a kid for something that was done completely outside the school's area of control.
I decided to ask the assistant principal/disciplinarian at the school what the guidelines were. He pointed me to the "Student Code of Conduct" (SCC) [cps.edu] (it's a
(On a side note, Group 5 offenses are considered those that "most seriously disrupt" school functioning, and include aggravated assault, inappropriate sexual conduct battery, criminal damage to property/vandalism over $500, and physical assault to a teacher. Does social network bullying really belong in that list? ...discussion for another time...)
Still, I wondered how the school could enforce that regulation outside of school hours, off school property, on a privately-owned computer. The disciplinarian told me that they were allowed to, and again pointed to the preface of the SCC:
Now, I don't know what kind of standard is required to be met to say that something "may disrupt the orderly educational process." I'd suppose that calling a kid a name on the playground could accomplish that, but there's no written proof of such events as there is on Facebook. Sure, the bullying kid should have gotten a tough talking to about appropriate behavior. Probably the school should have called the parents of the bully to deal with the situation. Maybe they did those things too, I don't know. But they definitely disciplined the kid in school because of something he did outside of school.
It still kind of boggles my mind that we give teachers and administrators (who are largely untrained in such matters) the power to enforce school discipline outside the purview of their schools. But that's the system we have in the city I live in.
Re:ACLU (Score:5, Informative)
Here's what the ACLU was actually saying in this particular case.
"The law is overly broad, criminalizing not only commercial SPAM but also anonymous non-commercial bulk emails containing political and religious messages"
http://www.acluva.org/docket/jaynes.html [acluva.org]
So the complaint here is Virginia's own anti-SPAM legislation was written to also penalize anonymous non-commercial free speech which is a violation of the first amendment. This is different from the federal CAN-SPAM law that specifically mentions that emails need to be commercial in nature to apply.
I also find it very funny that you pick this particular case because the Virginia supreme court eventually sided with the ACLU that the Virgina law was overly broad. Like most people that criticize the ACLU, I feel like you don't understand the issue they were trying to address.
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/151014/court_overturns_virginia_spam_law_conviction.html [pcworld.com]
Re:What about the parents? (Score:5, Informative)
Just because a school board/administrator writes it in to their policies doesn't make it legal or right. Those policies grossly exceed their jurisdiction when the activities occur outside school hours, on a students personal computer, and not on school property. The student is only subject to local, state and Federal law at that point not the whims of the school board.
People with some power often seek to acquire more power, and it regretably often falls on the shoulders of the people whose rights are being trampled to try to stop them.
For example the U.S. President and Attorney General have recently bestowed upon themselves the power to assasinate American citizens without any judicial oversight. Just because they say they can doesn't change the fact that they are probably violating the Constitution and their oath of office to uphold the Constitution. The burden has now shifted on entities like the ACLU to engage in a multi year battle in the courts to try to prove them wrong.
In a similar vein the Bush administration gave themselve the power to torture people which is also a violation of Federal laws and international treaties.
A problem may arise when the politicians who are breaking the laws manage to stack the judicial process, especially the Supreme court, so the courts also fail to do the right thing, and let them get away with it.
Another problem arises when you have a two party system and both parties have become equally complicit in dismantling the rule of law and trampling civil liberties.
When those two things happen all the checks and balances the founding fathers built in to the Constitution are gone, and you are on the road to a totalitarian state unless the actual people up and say NO. That is a hard thing though, most people are too afraid.