April 26, 2021 | 1:02 PM
WASHINGTON – The high school cheerleader relegated to the JV squad for another year responded with a fleeting fit of frustration: a photo of her upraised middle finger and another word that begins with F.
“F school, f softball, f cheer, f everything,” 14-year-old Brandi Levy typed into Snapchat one spring Saturday. Like all “snaps” posted to a Snapchat “story,” this one, sent to about 250 “friends,” was to disappear within 24 hours, before everyone returned to Pennsylvania’s Mahanoy Area High School on Monday.
Instead, an adolescent outburst and the adult reaction to it has arrived at the Supreme Court, where it could determine how the First Amendment’s protection of free speech applies to the off-campus activities of the nation’s 50 million public school students.
Cheerleader s Snapchat rant leads to momentous Supreme Court case on student speech sfgate.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from sfgate.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The would-be varsity cheerleader, the tattletale and Snapchat have converged in a Supreme Court free speech case sure to draw the interest of social media-loving students, concerned parents and wary school administrators everywhere.
In 2017, a ninth-grade student in Schuylkill County, Pa., who failed to make the varsity cheerleading squad, vented her frustration in an F-bomb laced Snapchat post. She repeated the same curse before each of the words âschool,â âsoftball,â âcheerâ and âeverything.â
A teammate told a coach about the post, and administrators kicked her off the junior varsity cheerleading squad.
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Now, in Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L., the Supreme Court faces the question: Can school officials punish students for social media posts even when students post them off-campus, including in their own homes? The stakes are high: School administrators say they need to know the limits of their authority. Students des
Guest column: Cheerleader s online rant tests students free speech rights thereporteronline.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from thereporteronline.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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The would-be varsity cheerleader, the tattletale and Snapchat have converged in a Supreme Court free speech case sure to draw the interest of social media-loving students, concerned parents and wary school administrators everywhere.Â
In 2017, a ninth-grade student in Schuylkill County, Pa., who failed to make the varsity cheerleading squad, vented her frustration in an F-bomb laced Snapchat post. She repeated the same curse before each of the words âschool,â âsoftball,â âcheerâ and âeverything.âÂ
A teammate told a coach about the post, and administrators kicked her off the junior varsity cheerleading squad.Â
Now, in Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L., the Supreme Court faces the question: Can school officials punish students for social media posts even when students post them off-campus, including in their own homes? The stakes are high: School administrators say they need to know the limits of their authority