View Full Version : Student's MySpace Rant Is Protected Speech, Says Court



OkieKAS
05-21-2007, 03:46 PM
An Indiana teen's probation has been lifted after the state's appellate court reversed another judge's ruling. The higher court ruled that "A.B.'s" criticism of her principal on MySpace, though vulgarly expressed, is political speech and not libelous, since it addresses her school's policies.

"While we have little regard for A.B.'s use of vulgar epithets, we conclude that her overall message constitutes political speech," the Indiana Court of Appeals notes in its opinion on the case.

The key finding in this particular case is that A.B. was speaking out against her principal and his policies rather than causing actual harm.

A Growing Trend

"We keep seeing issues cropping up all the time -- it seems like every week there's a new incident," David Hudson Jr., a research attorney for First Amendment Center, told TechNewsWorld. "There's some chance that the Supreme Court may delineate the line between what is exactly on-campus and off-campus speech, and how far the disciplinary arm of the school reaches, but right now it's a fairly muddled legal landscape as to how much principals have jurisdiction over this."


"Even if the school officials don't have jurisdiction, that doesn't prevent students from being subject to generally applicable civil or criminal laws," Hudson explained. "We've seen some students charged with actual crimes and some students being sued civilly for defamation by teachers, but there's certainly a difference between critical comments and pure outright defamation or libel. Just because someone says someone is a bad teacher or is a bad principal, that's really not actionable, but if they say a teacher is a sex offender and that's false, they could be liable for libel."