SCOTUS siding with Pa. high schooler on Snapchat rant is a bigger free speech victory | Opinion

In 1998, an African American parent in Arizona filed suit to block her child’s school from assigning Mark Twain’s classic novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and a short story by William Faulkner, “A Rose for Emily.” Both works used the N-word, the parent noted, and Black students would suffer psychological injuries in reading them.

That’s the cry of censors, in all times and places: speech hurts. And they’re not wrong about that. But once we stop allowing hurtful speech, we won’t be able to speak at all.

The Supreme Court reaffirmed that principle in an 8-1 decision on Wednesday, siding with a former Pennsylvania high school cheerleader who was suspended from her team for a profanity-laced social media post. The Mahanoy Area School District argued that it needed the power to regulate students’ off-campus speech in order to prevent bullying, cheating, and other dangerous behaviors.

» READ MORE: A Pa. high school cheerleader’s profane Snapchat rant didn’t warrant suspension, Supreme Court rules

The court acknowledged that there might be times when educators could do that. But to censor ex-cheerleader Brandi Levy or any other student, the court said, officials had to show that their out-of-school speech threatened a “substantial interference” with in-school operations.

That’s the standard from Tinker v. Des Moines, the 1969 case upholding the right of students to wear armbands protesting the Vietnam War. Then, as now, officials worried that the students would undermine the order and functioning of their schools.

Yet, only seven kids in the 18,000-student Des Moines school district wore armbands to school. When Justice Thurgood Marshall heard that, during oral arguments, he realized that district’s claim was specious and started to nod off. That’s when Lorena Tinker, mother of two plaintiffs in the case, realized that they would win.

The Mahanoy case began when sophomore Brandi Levy discovered she had failed to make the varsity cheerleading squad (like the softball team before that) and posted a message on Snapchat, saying, “F— school f— softball f— cheer f— everything.”

» READ MORE: Should a teen’s Snapchat rant have made it all the way to the Supreme Court? | Pro/Con

Someone took a screenshot of the post, which found its way to a cheerleading coach. The school then suspended Levy from the junior varsity team, arguing that she had broken its policy against posting “negative information” about cheerleading on the internet. It also said that other members of the team had been, yes, “visibly upset” when they saw the post.

But on those grounds, a school could censor anyone for pretty much anything. Most meaningful speech is negative, insofar as it criticizes something that other people see as sacrosanct. And they will often feel upset when their beliefs and values are challenged.

If you think that reads too much into an immature kid’s Snapchat post, think again. As the court declared on Wednesday, “sometimes it is necessary to protect the superfluous in order to preserve the necessary.” Our schools and universities have a long history of suppressing unpopular words and ideas. Take away Levy’s speech rights, and yours might be next.

In 2019, officials in Norfolk, Va., forced student reporters to delete a broadcast describing dilapidated school conditions. Last year, as the pandemic raged, two Georgia high school students said they were disciplined for posting a picture of unmasked peers in a crowded hallway. And earlier this year, administrators at an Omaha, Neb., school censored a student publication that — you can’t make this up — criticized the censorship of student publications.

All of these students upset someone, of course. And that brings us back to Twain and Faulkner, whose writings upset the African American parent in Arizona. Fortunately, a federal court turned away her challenge: If these works could be removed because they upset Black students, the court ruled, Jewish students might block works by Shakespeare, female students could prohibit Freud, and male students might remove Margaret Atwood.

I don’t doubt that some people were upset by Levy’s Snapchat post, too. But I also don’t want to live in a country where a school can monitor everything kids say — no matter where they are — to make sure they don’t hurt anyone.

Do you?

Jonathan Zimmerman teaches education and history at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author (with cartoonist Signe Wilkinson) of “Free Speech and Why You Should Give a Damn,” which was published in April by City of Light Press.