Supreme Court rules in favor of Levy
Brandi and Larry Levy during a Zoom interview.
MAHANOY CITY – “It’s over.”
Those words concluded a public Facebook post by Larry Levy countering a Mahanoy Area School District media release regarding today’s ruling by our nation’s highest court in a case centering around Levy’s daughter.
The case, sparked when Mahanoy’s cheerleading squad kicked Levy’s daughter, Brandi, off the team for a year for a private Snapchat story, concluded today with a ruling by the United States Supreme Court reaffirming “the importance of free speech rights of young people and students across the country,” according to the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, who represented the Levy family.
It has been ascending the federal court ladder since Levy and the ACLU took the matter to court after pleas fell on deaf ears at the school board, he said previously, and at each level, Mahanoy Area has been dealt a loss.
According to the ACLU of PA, the court ruled that school authorities must respect students’ rights to express themselves outside of school, including their right to express dissenting or unpopular views. The court recognized that schools do not have the same authority to punish students for speech outside of school as they do in school contexts, and also that parents, not schools, exercise primary responsibility for their children’s speech.
The court wrote: “[T]he 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.”
“Protecting young people’s free speech rights when they are outside of school is vital, and this is a huge victory for the free speech rights of millions of students who attend our nation’s public schools,” said David Cole, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union. “The school in this case asked the court to allow it to punish speech that it considered ‘disruptive,’ regardless of where it occurs. If the court had accepted that argument, it would have put in peril all manner of young people’s speech, including their expression on politics, school operations, and general teen frustrations. The message from this ruling is clear — free speech is for everyone, and that includes public school students.”
“The school went too far, and I’m glad that the Supreme Court agrees,” said Brandi Levy. “I was frustrated, I was 14 years old, and I expressed my frustration the way teenagers do today. Young people need to have the ability to express themselves without worrying about being punished when they get to school. I never could have imagined that one simple snap would turn into a Supreme Court case, but I’m proud that my family and I advocated for the rights of millions of public school students.”
Brandi was a freshman in high school when she wrote “F— school, F— softball, F— cheer, F— everything” with middle fingers raised at Cocoa Hut in Mahanoy City in a private Snapchat story, expressing frustration with missing the cut for the varsity cheerleading squad at Mahanoy and being relegated to Junior Varsity for another year. She is now a freshman in college.
“The school district in this case was asking the court to grant the same authority schools currently have to curb and punish speech within school buildings to students’ off-campus speech,” the ACLU wrote.
In its ruling, the ACLU said, the court affirmed that the student’s snap was protected speech under the First Amendment, as it was posted off of school grounds and not at a school-related activity, and the school violated the First Amendment by punishing her for her speech.
“When we received the Levys’ complaint, we thought this situation would be resolved quickly and that the school would accept our guidance, but obviously that didn’t happen,” said Witold Walczak, legal director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania. “I am proud of our team at the ACLU, who effectively argued before three courts that public school students should not be monitored 24-7 by school officials. I am especially proud of Brandi and her family, who stood up for one of the most fundamental rights that we cherish in this country, the right to speak freely without government interference.”
“In this ruling, the Supreme Court has affirmed what we’ve said all along — students have greater free speech rights out of school and on their own time,” said Reggie Shuford, executive director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania. “The school district asked for vast powers to monitor and punish students’ speech at all times, no matter where or when it occurs. We are grateful that the court understood how dangerous that argument was and rejected it.”
Mahanoy Area said they are “pleased with and vindicated by today’s Supreme Court decision.”
“The School District unanimously won the issue upon which it sought Supreme Court review: all 9 Justices rejected the Third Circuit’s conclusion that school districts lack authority to regulate off-campus speech,” Mahanoy Area wrote. “The Supreme Court held that it does “not agree with the reasoning of the Third Circuit.” The Supreme Court instead enumerated many examples of situations when school districts can regulate off-campus speech and made it clear that its list was not exclusive.”
“So, although the Court upheld the $1 judgment in favor of Ms. Levy, we are very pleased that the Court agreed with our arguments about schools’ authority to address off-campus speech under a wide variety of situations,” Mahanoy continued. “This decision is an important vindication of schools’ authority to protect students and staff and to fulfill schools’ educational missions.”
The Supreme Court ruled that “B. L.’s posts are entitled to First Amendment protection. The statements made in B. L.’s Snapchats reflect criticism of the rules of a community of which B. L. forms a part. And B. L.’s message did not involve features that would place it outside the First Amendment’s ordinary protection.” Brandi is identified in court documents as “B.L.” as she was a minor when the case was filed. “
The circumstances of B. L.’s speech diminish the school’s interest in regulation. B. L.’s posts appeared outside of school hours from a location outside the school. She did not identify the school in her posts or target any member of the school community with vulgar or abusive language. B. L. also transmitted her speech through a personal cellphone, to an audience consisting of her private circle of Snapchat friends. The school’s interest in teaching good manners and consequently in punishing the use of vulgar language aimed at part of the school community is weakened considerably by the fact that B. L. spoke outside the school on her own time.”
The court’s ruling notes that the school’s interest in regulating free speech outside of school is diminished as, typically, they will not stand “in loco parentis” or in place of a parent in those situations.
Countering the school’s argument that it was trying to prevent disruption, if not in the classroom, in the cheerleading squad, the court said “we can find no evidence in the record of the sort of ‘substantial disruption’ of a school activity or a threatened harm to the rights of others that might justify the school’s action.”
The court, however, did rule that the long-standing standard set by Tinker v. Des Moines Schools that “[C]onduct by [a] student, in class or out of it, which for any reason—whether it stems from time, place, or type of behavior—materially disrupts classwork or involves substantial disorder or invasion of the rights of others is . . . not immunized by the constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech” stands.
They added that the court had not sufficiently justified the use of that standard in Brandi’s punishment, saying her speech “was not substantially disruptive.”
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