The uncharted legal waters of online student free speech just got a little murkier. The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals several weeks ago reached different rulings in the cases of two separate students that created parody MySpace profiles of their school principals.
In the first case, an eighth grader in Schuylkill County, Pa. uploaded sexually explicit photos as well as a picture of her principal to a fake MySpace profile, which also stated the principal was a pedophile and a sex addict. Students and school officials discovered the web page almost immediately and the MySpace profile was widely discussed at school the following day, according to the Associated Press.
The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the 14-year old's ten-day suspension, maintaining that the MySpace profile would cause a "substantial disruption" at school and therefore should be restricted in accordance with prior case law.
However, in another case, the court ruled against the Hermitage School District in Mercer County, Pa. Former Hickory High School senior Justin Layshock also created a fake MySpace profile for his school principal, but in the Hermitage case, the court ruled that school officials "cannot reach into a family's home and police the Internet."
The rulings have left legal experts scratching their heads. Supreme Court opinion on student free speech cases does not extend into the realm of cyberspace, so appellate courts are left to clean up the mess themselves.
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