Posted by wlansden |
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By Brian Malcom
A federal magistrate judge in Florida ruled that a high school student has a constitutional right to criticize her teacher on the web. A former Florida high school student was suspended after she set up a Facebook page to criticize her teacher. The Facebook page was titled, "Ms. Sarah Phelps is the worst teacher I've ever met." CNN reports that the student wrote things like, "To those select students who have had the displeasure of having Ms. Sarah Phelps, or simply knowing her and her insane antics: Here is the place to express your feelings of hatred."
Free Speech and Facebook came together in the judge's determination that the student had a constitutional right to express her views through the social media site. The judge found that the student's speech online was protected speech. Important to the judge's determination that speech was protected was that the speech was published off-campus, was not lewd, vulgar, threatening, or advocating illegal or dangerous behavior. The student did not use school computers to post the criticisms.
Apparently, the student was suspended for three days for cyberbullying of a staff member. In a fit of overreaction, the principal also removed the AP student from her advanced classes and assigned her to regular classes. (Can you do that?) The suit seeks to wipe the student's record clean of the suspension and nominal damages.
Score one for expressing your opinion on Web 2.0. Still, I would not recommend railing against your law firm on the web anytime soon.
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