Facebook. Free speech. High school.
Mix them together and what do you get? A volatile combination. Just ask Katie Evans.
In 2007, then 17-year-old Evans set up a Facebook page to complain about an instructor she dubbed “the worst teacher I’ve ever met.” Her principal at Pembroke Pines Charter Schools in Florida wasn’t amused. Not even a little bit. He suspended Evans for three days and had her removed from Advanced Placement classes.
Evans later sued, arguing that the discipline she received could have impaired her academically and in her career. Her lawsuit stated that the punishment she received was unwarranted.
Two years later, Judge Barry Garber has ruled in Evans’ favor.
“Evans’ speech falls under the wide umbrella of protected speech,” Garber said in his ruling. “It was an opinion of a student about a teacher that was published off-campus, did not cause any disruption on campus and was not lewd, vulgar, threatening or advocating illegal or dangerous behavior.”
It’s unclear how Evans will profit from all this: She graduated, after all, so it’s unlikely she’d want to re-enroll in her AP courses. But some experts believe the case could set an important legal precedent.
Sam Terilli, a media law and ethics professor at the University of Miami, said this case could impact how aggressively school administrators seek to discipline students in similar situations elsewhere. “I think there has been too great a tendency in recent years for public school officials to sort of reach beyond the classroom, reach beyond the school campus very often to try to regulate or punish free speech by students in the name of protecting order,” Terilli told The Miami Herald.
He added, however, that any hint of violence in an online post has to be taken very seriously. “While we can all understand that, post-Columbine, there are limits. If a student is using [Facebook] or any other medium to threaten or even imply threats of violence, that’s a different matter.”
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