In Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L., a high school student posted a message on Snapchat after she was upset about not making the varsity cheerleading team. The post included vulgar language and gestures criticizing the school and the cheer program. Although the post was made outside of school and during the weekend, other students shared screenshots with coaches, and the student was suspended from the cheerleading team for a year. The student and her parents challenged the punishment, arguing that it violated her First Amendment right to free speech.
The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the student. The Court explained that while schools sometimes have an interest in regulating student speech that occurs off campus—such as threats, severe bullying, or disruptions to school activities—their authority is generally weaker outside of school. Because the student’s post occurred off campus, did not target a specific individual, and did not cause a substantial disruption at school, the punishment violated the First Amendment. The decision emphasized that schools must be cautious when regulating off-campus student speech and that protecting students’ ability to express unpopular ideas remains an important constitutional principle.
Excerpt from the majority opinion by Justice Stephen Briar (2021)
This Court has previously outlined three specific categories of student speech that schools may regulate in certain circumstances: (1) “indecent,” “lewd,” or “vulgar” speech uttered during a school assembly on school grounds, see id., at 685; (2) speech, uttered during a class trip, that promotes “illegal drug use,” see Morse v. Frederick, 551 U. S. 393, 409 (2007); and (3) speech that others may reasonably perceive as “bear[ing] the imprimatur of the school,” such as that appearing in a school-sponsored newspaper, see Kuhlmeier, 484 U. S., at 271.
Finally, in Tinker, we said schools have a special interest in regulating speech that “materially disrupts classwork or involves substantial disorder or invasion of the rights of others.” 393 U. S., at 513. These special characteristics call for special leeway when schools regulate speech that occurs under its supervision…
We can, however, mention three features of off-campus speech that often, even if not always, distinguish schools’ efforts to regulate that speech from their efforts to regulate on-campus speech. Those features diminish the strength of the unique educational characteristics that might call for special First Amendment leeway.
First, a school, in relation to off-campus speech, will rarely stand in loco parentis. The doctrine of in loco parentis treats school administrators as standing in the place of students’ parents under circumstances where the children’s actual parents cannot protect, guide, and discipline them. Geographically speaking, off-campus speech will normally fall within the zone of parental, rather than school-related, responsibility.
Second, from the student speaker’s perspective, regulations of off-campus speech, when coupled with regulations of on-campus speech, include all the speech a student utters during the full 24-hour day. That means courts must be more skeptical of a school’s efforts to regulate off-campus speech, for doing so may mean the student cannot engage in that kind of speech at all. When it comes to political or religious speech that occurs outside school or a school program or activity, the school will have a heavy burden to justify intervention.
Third, the school itself has an interest in protecting a student’s unpopular expression, especially when the expression takes place off campus. America’s public schools are the nurseries of democracy. Our representative democracy only works if we protect the “marketplace of ideas.” This free exchange facilitates an informed public opinion, which, when transmitted to lawmakers, helps produce laws that reflect the People’s will. That protection must include the protection of unpopular ideas, for popular ideas have less need for protection. Thus, schools have a strong interest in ensuring that future generations understand the workings in practice of the well-known aphorism, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” (Although this quote is often attributed to Voltaire, it was likely coined by an English writer, Evelyn Beatrice Hall.)
Given the many different kinds of off-campus speech, the different potential school-related and circumstance-specific justifications, and the differing extent to which those justifications may call for First Amendment leeway, we can, as a general matter, say little more than this: Taken together, these three features of much off-campus speech mean that the leeway the First Amendment grants to schools in light of their special characteristics is diminished. We leave for future cases to decide where, when, and how these features mean the speaker’s off-campus location will make the critical difference. This case can, however, provide one example.