20-255 Mahanoy Area School Dist. V. B. L. (06/23/2021)
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
(Slip Opinion) OCTOBER TERM, 2020 1 Syllabus NOTE: Where it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be released, as is being done in connection with this case, at the time the opinion is issued. The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader. See United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U. S. 321, 337. SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES Syllabus MAHANOY AREA SCHOOL DISTRICT v. B. L., A MINOR, BY AND THROUGH HER FATHER, LEVY, ET AL. CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT No. 20–255. Argued April 28, 2021—Decided June 23, 2021 Mahanoy Area High School student B. L. failed to make the school’s var- sity cheerleading squad. While visiting a local convenience store over the weekend, B. L. posted two images on Snapchat, a social media ap- plication for smartphones that allows users to share temporary images with selected friends. B. L.’s posts expressed frustration with the school and the school’s cheerleading squad, and one contained vulgar language and gestures. When school officials learned of the posts, they suspended B. L. from the junior varsity cheerleading squad for the up- coming year. After unsuccessfully seeking to reverse that punishment, B. L. and her parents sought relief in federal court, arguing inter alia that punishing B. L. for her speech violated the First Amendment. The District Court granted an injunction ordering the school to reinstate B. L. to the cheerleading team. Relying on Tinker v. Des Moines Inde- pendent Community School Dist., 393 U. S. 503, to grant B. L.’s subse- quent motion for summary judgment, the District Court found that B. L.’s punishment violated the First Amendment because her Snap- chat posts had not caused substantial disruption at the school. The Third Circuit affirmed the judgment, but the panel majority reasoned that Tinker did not apply because schools had no special license to reg- ulate student speech occurring off campus. Held: While public schools may have a special interest in regulating some off-campus student speech, the special interests offered by the school are not sufficient to overcome B. L.’s interest in free expression in this case. Pp. 4–11. (a) In Tinker, we indicated that schools have a special interest in regulating on-campus student speech that “materially disrupts class- 2 MAHANOY AREA SCHOOL DIST. v. B. L. Syllabus work or involves substantial disorder or invasion of the rights of oth- ers.” 393 U. S., at 513. The special characteristics that give schools additional license to regulate student speech do not always disappear when that speech takes place off campus. Circumstances that may implicate a school’s regulatory interests include serious or severe bul- lying or harassment targeting particular individuals; threats aimed at teachers or other students; the failure to follow rules concerning les- sons, the writing of papers, the use of computers, or participation in other online school activities; and breaches of school security devices. Pp. 4–6. (b) But three features of off-campus speech often, even if not always, distinguish schools’ efforts to regulate off-campus speech. First, a school will rarely stand in loco parentis when a student speaks off cam- pus. Second, from the student speaker’s perspective, regulations of off- campus speech, when coupled with regulations of on-campus speech, include all the speech a student utters during the full 24-hour day. That means courts must be more skeptical of a school’s efforts to regu- late off-campus speech, for doing so may mean the student cannot en- gage in that kind of speech at all. Third, the school itself has an inter- est in protecting a student’s unpopular expression, especially when the expression takes place off campus, because America’s public schools are the nurseries of democracy. Taken together, these three features of much off-campus speech mean that the leeway the First Amendment grants to schools in light of their special characteristics is diminished. Pp. 6–8. (c) The school violated B. L.’s First Amendment rights when it sus- pended her from the junior varsity cheerleading squad. Pp. 8–11. (1) B. L.’s posts are entitled to First Amendment protection. The statements made in B. L.’s Snapchats reflect criticism of the rules of a community of which B. L. forms a part. And B. L.’s message did not involve features that would place it outside the First Amendment’s or- dinary protection. Pp. 8–9. (2) The circumstances of B. L.’s speech diminish the school’s inter- est in regulation. B. L.’s posts appeared outside of school hours from a location outside the school. She did not identify the school in her posts or target any member of the school community with vulgar or abusive language. B. L. also transmitted her speech through a per- sonal cellphone, to an audience consisting of her private circle of Snap- chat friends. P. 9. (3) The school’s interest in teaching good manners and conse- quently in punishing the use of vulgar language aimed at part of the school community is weakened considerably by the fact that B. L. spoke outside the school on her own time. B. L. spoke under circum- Cite as: 594 U. S. ____ (2021) 3 Syllabus stances where the school did not stand in loco parentis. And the vul- garity in B. L.’s posts encompassed a message of criticism. In addition, the school has presented no evidence of any general effort to prevent students from using vulgarity outside the classroom. Pp. 9–10. (4) The school’s interest in preventing disruption is not supported by the record, which shows that discussion of the matter took, at most, 5 to 10 minutes of an Algebra class “for just a couple of days” and that some members of the cheerleading team were “upset” about the con- tent of B. L.’s Snapchats. App. 82–83. This alone does not satisfy Tinker’s demanding standards. Pp. 10–11. (5) Likewise, there is little to suggest a substantial interference in, or disruption of, the school’s efforts to maintain cohesion on the school cheerleading squad. P. 11. 964 F. 3d 170, affirmed. BREYER, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which ROBERTS, C. J., and ALITO, SOTOMAYOR, KAGAN, GORSUCH, KAVANAUGH and BARRETT, JJ., joined. ALITO, J., filed a concurring opinion, in which GORSUCH, J., joined. THOMAS, J., filed a dissenting opinion. Cite as: 594 U. S. ____ (2021) 1 Opinion of the Court NOTICE: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the preliminary print of the United States Reports. Readers are requested to notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Wash- ington, D. C. 20543, of any typographical or other formal errors, in order that corrections may be made before the preliminary print goes to press. SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES _________________ No. 20–255 _________________ MAHANOY AREA SCHOOL DISTRICT, PETITIONER v. B. L., A MINOR, BY AND THROUGH HER FATHER, LAWRENCE LEVY AND HER MOTHER, BETTY LOU LEVY ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT [June 23, 2021] JUSTICE BREYER delivered the opinion of the Court. A public high school student used, and transmitted to her Snapchat friends, vulgar language and gestures criticizing both the school and the school’s cheerleading team. The student’s speech took place outside of school hours and away from the school’s campus. In response, the school sus- pended the student for a year from the cheerleading team. We must decide whether the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit correctly held that the school’s decision violated the First Amendment. Although we do not agree with the rea- soning of the Third Circuit panel’s majority, we do agree with its conclusion that the school’s disciplinary action vio- lated the First Amendment. I A B. L. (who, together with her parents, is a respondent in this case) was a student at Mahanoy Area High School, a public school in Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania. At the end of her freshman year, B. L. tried out for a position on the 2 MAHANOY AREA SCHOOL DIST. v. B. L. Opinion of the Court school’s varsity cheerleading squad and for right fielder on a private softball team. She did not make the varsity cheer- leading team or get her preferred softball position, but she was offered a spot on the cheerleading squad’s junior var- sity team. B. L. did not accept the coach’s decision with good grace, particularly because the squad coaches had placed an entering freshman on the varsity team. That weekend, B. L. and a friend visited the Cocoa Hut, a local convenience store. There, B. L. used her smartphone to post two photos on Snapchat, a social media application that allows users to post photos and videos that disappear after a set period of time. B. L. posted the images to her Snapchat “story,” a feature of the application that allows any person in the user’s “friend” group (B. L. had about 250 “friends”) to view the images for a 24 hour period. The first image B. L. posted showed B. L. and a friend with middle fingers raised; it bore the caption: “Fuck school fuck softball fuck cheer fuck everything.” App. 20. The sec- ond image was blank but for a caption, which read: “Love how me and [another student] get told we need a year of jv before we make varsity but tha[t] doesn’t matter to anyone else?” The caption also contained an upside-down smiley- face emoji.