Monday Myspace Comments

High School students win Free Speech cases

In two separate cases two students created online social profiles of their respective principals at the website Myspace.com. The profiles contained vulgar language and lewd suggestions.

In 2005, Justin Layshock, created a MySpace profile his principal’s name and completed a survey saying he was too drunk to remember his birthday, smokes “big blunts” and under “Interests” listed “Transgender, Appreciators of Alcoholic Beverages.”

The other student, named “J.S.” created a MySpace profile of her principal in 2007. J.S. said the principal’s interests are “detention, being a tight ass, spending time with my child (who looks like a gorilla).” And in the “about me” section said, “For those who want to be my friend, and aren’t in my school[,] I love children, sex (any kind), dogs, long walks on the beach, tv, being a dick head, and last but not least my darling wife who looks like a man (who satisfies my needs ) MY FRAINTRAIN….”

In response, both schools gave their students a 10-day suspension. However, Layshock’s school went further, placing him in a Alternative Education Program for the remainder of the school year, banning him from extracurricular activities such as teaching French, and not allowing him to walk at graduation. These punishments prompted the students’ parents to file for both first and fourth amendment right violations– free speech and due process respectively.

While the court was skeptical of Fourth Amendment claims, it agreed that both students’ First Amendment rights were violated. Layshock won 14-0, while J.S. won 8-6. At the heart of both cases were the questions of whether the two profiles’ satirical tones count as defamation and if schools can punish a student for online comments made off-campus.

(D.C. voted best city to raise kids)

Judge James Munley, writing for the majority in J.S.’s case, said, “The profile was so outrageous that no one could have taken it seriously, and no one did.”

Judge Theodore McKee, writing for the majority in Layshock’s case, said, “It would be an unseemly and dangerous precedent to allow the state in the guise of school authorities to reach into a child’s home and control his/her actions there to the same extent that they can control that child when he/she participates in school sponsored activities. Allowing the District to punish Justin for conduct he engaged in using his grandmother’s computer while at his grandmother’s house would create just such a precedent and we therefore conclude that the district court correctly ruled that the District’s response to Justin’s expressive conduct violated the First Amendment guarantee of free expression.

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