We’d discussed the the “F*** cheer” incident when it was argued at SCOTUS. By now many of you know the cheerleader won. The school and school board did violate her 1st amendment rights when they kicked her off the cheersquad for her Snapchat outburts.<\/p>\n
On Volokh a commenter wondered<\/a><\/p>\n am curious why her private comments to a privately selected cadre of friends in a private digital medium recieved the ire of the school for being disruptive when but for the actions of another person who brought this content and then shared it themselves with others at school it would not have been a school issue.<\/p>\n Why isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t this second person the one having to defend themsleves in court (where I would support them being victorious just as B.L. was)? It was their speech\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 essentially quoting B.L., that would be the source of on campus disruption. Had they not quoted it\/shared it\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 the whole thing would have likely stayed a totally private affair.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n When I read that I recalled that the ‘second person’ in question was the cheer coach’s daughter. So I was motivated to hunt more down. It’s not easy to find likely because it was a legally relevant question. I did find this at wikipedia:<\/p>\n The following weekend, B.L. and a friend commiserated about the apparent unfairness of this at the Cocoa Hut, a convenience store in downtown Mahanoy City where students often socialized. Using B.L.’s smartphone, the two took a selfie with middle fingers raised and posted it to her Snapchat story with the text “fuck school fuck softball fuck cheer fuck everything”.[6][7][8] A followup Snap expressed their frustration about being kept on the JV squad while the incoming freshman girl made varsity; they believed they were being treated unfairly. B.L. sent the two Snaps to a group of 250 friends, many of whom were fellow students, some of them cheerleaders themselves.[4] So reading that, I can’t help wonder two more things:<\/p>\n Anyway, I can’t help but think it looks like the school’s policies were clearly aimed at controlling even non-vulgar fairly bland criticisms of sartorial choices of others. Of course, in court the school didn’t say<\/i> they want to control every student utterance everywhere. They presented themselves as wanting to control things like bullying, cheating, harassment or true threats. But it’s pretty clear this particular school was in the habit of trying to control even entirely innocuous speech and did so.<\/p>\n I hate to think how many schools would have thought it fine to control every aspect of student speech every where if this school had won! (And I’m also now curious about the other school’s cheer uniforms. Were they ugly? Slutty? Dowdy? Enquiring bloggers want to know.)<\/p>\n Comment note: I’ve got other open threads. Let’s stick to the cheerleader and free speech here. Or, if you can find them the other schools uniforms!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We’d discussed the the “F*** cheer” incident when it was argued at SCOTUS. By now many of you know the cheerleader won. The school and school board did violate her 1st amendment rights when they kicked her off the cheersquad for her Snapchat outburts. On Volokh a commenter wondered am curious why her private comments … Continue reading What if the potty mouthed cheerlead had lost?<\/span>
\nThe Snap itself self-deleted in a short period of time, but one of her teammates took a screenshot.[6] One of those teammates was the daughter of one of the coaches, who had herself been suspended from cheering at a few games after she had posted disparaging remarks online about another school’s cheerleading squad’s uniforms.<\/u>[9] By the time school resumed for the following week, the screenshot had been widely shared among students, especially the cheerleaders. Some who had seen it came to the cheerleading coaches “visibly upset” by the Snap[10] over the next few days.[4] At the end of the week one of the coaches pulled B.L. out of class to inform her that she was suspended from cheerleading for the next year as a result of her Snap.[3] B.L.’s parents appealed the suspension to the school board, which upheld it.[7<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n