[IP] when will they learn -- Appeals Court Weighs Teen's Web Speech

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

________________________________________
From: Zach White [zwhite@darkstar.frop.org]
Sent: Thursday, March 06, 2008 2:11 PM
To: David Farber
Cc: Matt Murray
Subject: Re: [IP] Appeals Court Weighs Teen's Web Speech

On Thu, Mar 06, 2008 at 05:05:09AM -0800, David Farber wrote:
>
> ________________________________________
> From: Matt Murray [mattm@optonline.net]
> Sent: Thursday, March 06, 2008 7:07 AM
> To: David Farber
> Subject: Appeals Court Weighs Teen's Web Speech
>
> NEW YORK - A teen who used vulgar slang in an Internet blog to complain
> about school administrators shouldn't have been punished by the school, her
> lawyer told a federal appeals court.

This is far from the first time schools have attempted to treat online
speech the same as on-campus speech.

I believe the first case is O'Brien v. Westlake City Schools Board of
Education. In that case, Sean O'Brien (RIP) created a website,
raymondsucks.org, to make fun of his band teacher. He was predictably
suspended over the incident. A federal judge overturned the suspension.
The school settled the suit for $30,000.

http://www.freedomforum.org/packages/first/censorshipinternetspeech/part3.htm

It looks like earlier this year another student was expelled for their
online doings, and a slashdot commenter did the work of collecting up
the relevent case law for me:

http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=416450&cid=22028428

What concerns me most about this case is that in more than 10 years of
court cases about these issues, schools still treat students as if they
don't have any rights. What message is that sending to our youth?

-Zach

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