Can a school district punish a student for making derogatory comments about staff members online? Not according to the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed a lawsuit Tuesday against a Minnesota school district and sheriff’s office.
In the suit, filed in U.S. District Court, the ACLU claims a 12-year-old student was disciplined by administrators of the Minnewaska Area School District after she posted on Facebook that she “hated” a hall monitor who was “mean” to her.
In an interesting twist, Facebook’s sign-up policy requires users to reach 13 years of age before they are granted an account. We reached out to Facebook for a comment on the matter, and we’ll update this post when we hear back.
According to the lawsuit, the girl’s principal decided that the Facebook post constituted “bullying.” As punishment, she was given detention and made to apologize.
She then posted another comment, saying that she was annoyed someone had shown her first comment to school officials. This second comment contained off-color language. The school district’s response?
“She was given an in-school suspension and was prohibited from attending a school field trip,” according to the ACLU.
The young girl’s struggle with her school district didn’t end there. The ACLU’s lawsuit says that the girl was later forced by a school administrator to hand over her Facebook and email login information after she was accused of chatting online with another young student about sex. The ALCU said that a local police deputy was present while administrators searched through her online chat record, and that the student’s parents were not informed of the search before it occurred.
None of the posts or emails the school district found offensive were posted from a school computer or on school property.
The ACLU claims the punishments were a violation of the student’s First Amendment right to freedom of speech and Fouth Amendment right to freedom from unreasonable search and seizure.
“Students do not shed their First Amendment rights at the school house gate,” said Charles Samuelson, executive director for the Minnesota branch of the ACLU, in a statement. “The Supreme Court ruled on that in the 1970s, yet schools like Minnewaska seem to have no regard for the standard.”
Do you think the school district was right to punish the student for her posts or ask her for her login information? Sound off in the comments below.
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