Supreme Court arguments leave Levys unsure of possible result
MAHANOY CITY – After Wednesday morning’s arguments before the United States Supreme Court, Larry Levy isn’t quite sure how the court will rule on Mahanoy Area vs. B.L.
Levy, the father of Brandi Levy, an 18-year-old former Mahanoy Area cheerleader identified as B.L. in court records because of her age at the time, weighed in on the arguments Thursday afternoon.
“I’m not sure how it’s going to go,” Larry told the Sentinel. “I couldn’t read one way or the other.”
The case, stemming from a punishment levied on Brandi’s expletive-laced Snapchat venting frustration with cheerleading and other activities, has garnered international media attention and is poised to tackle a key free speech issue pertaining to students rights in the digital world.
“There were some good questions asked by all of the Supreme Court justices, I think they asked some very important questions,” Larry Levy said.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh said that Brandi’s one-year suspension for the tweet seemed like an over-reaction.
“She’s competitive, she cares, she blew off steam like millions of other kids have when they’re disappointed about being cut from the high school team or not being in the starting lineup or not making all league,” Kavanaugh said. “I think that’s just emblematic of how much it means to kids to make a high school team. It is so important to their lives, and coaches sweat the cuts, and it guts coaches to have to cut a kid who’s on the bubble, and — and good coaches understand the importance and they understand the emotions.”
Justice Stephen Breyer noted how much schools have changed over the past several decades as a difficulty in the case.
“The difficulty I have I’ve already mentioned. A few years ago, a superintendent of schools, I think in San Francisco, said, you know, schools have changed a lot, public schools, since when I went there,” Breyer said. “He said, today we don’t just teach classical subjects. We’re there to help the child have adequate health, in many cases, to see that he’s adequately fed. In quite a few cases, we become a caretaker, and we don’t want to send them home immediately because there’s nobody home, and we have to plan after-school activities.”
“There are dozens of areas that didn’t used to be thought of as within the purview of the public school,” Breyer continued. “Today, in many places, they are. Now add to that the Internet and the Internet not just listening to teachers but also doing homework and also writing papers, sometimes vaguely defined and sometimes and sometimes.”
“How do I get a standard out of that?” Breyer added. “I’m frightened to death of writing a standard.”
In a media release distributed Wednesday, Witold Walczak, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, representing the Levy family, said, “The school district in this case is asking the court for the ability to punish a student’s speech wherever they go, at any time of the day or night. Public schools cannot be empowered in that way. The district is reaching well beyond its authority, into an area that is best left to parents.”
“At school, kids understandably have reduced free speech rights,” David Cole, national legal director for the ACLU, said. “But outside school, they should have the same free speech rights that everyone else has. If the school prevails here, young people will have nowhere they can speak freely without fear that a school official will punish them.”
A decision is expected in August.
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