The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that a Pennsylvania public school wrongly suspended a student from cheerleading over a vulgar social media post she made after she didn't qualify for the varsity team.
The court voted 8-1 in favor of Brandi Levy, who was a 14-year-old high school freshman when she expressed her disappointment over not making the varsity cheerleading squad with a string of curse words and a raised middle finger on Snapchat.
Levy, of Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania, was not in school when she made her post, but she was suspended from cheerleading activities for a year anyway. In an opinion by Justice Stephen Breyer, the high court ruled that the suspension violated Levy's First Amendment freedom of speech rights.
But the justices did not foreclose schools from disciplining students for what they say off campus. An earlier federal appeals court ruling in this case would have barred public schools from punishing off-campus speech.
Despite ruling in Levy's favor, Breyer wrote that “we do not believe the special characteristics that give schools additional license to regulate student speech always disappear when a school regulates speech that takes place off campus. The school’s regulatory interests remain significant in some off-campus circumstances.”
The case drew extra interest at a time of remote learning because of the coronavirus pandemic and a rising awareness of the harmful effects of online bullying.
The case arose from Levy's posts, one of which pictured her and a friend with raised middle fingers and included repeated use of a vulgarity to complain that she had been left off the varsity cheerleading squad.
“F——— school f——— softball f——— cheer f——— everything,” she wrote near the end of her freshman year, from a local convenience store and on a Saturday. Now 18, Levy recently finished her first year of college.
Levy's parents filed a federal lawsuit after the cheerleading coach suspended her from the junior varsity team for a year. Lower courts ruled in Levy's favor, and she was reinstated.
The school district appealed to the Supreme Court after the broad appellate ruling that said off-campus student speech was beyond schools' authority to punish.
The dispute is the latest in a line of a cases that began with Tinker v. Des Moines, the Vietnam-era case of a high school in Des Moines, Iowa, that suspended students who wore armbands to protest the war. In a landmark ruling, the Supreme Court sided with the students, declaring they don’t “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”
The court also held then that schools retained the authority to restrict speech that would disrupt the school environment.
Breyer wrote that Levy's case seemed less serious than its Vietnam-era predecessor.
“It might be tempting to dismiss B. L.’s words as unworthy of the robust First Amendment protections discussed herein. But sometimes it is necessary to protect the superfluous in order to preserve the necessary,” he wrote, using Levy's initials because that was how she was identified in the original lawsuit. Levy has granted numerous interviews allowing her name to be used.
Justice Samuel Alito wrote in a concurring opinion that school officials in Mahanoy got “carried away” in seeking to discipline Levy. “If today’s decision teaches any lesson, it must be that the regulation of many types of off-premises student speech raises serious First Amendment concerns, and school officials should proceed cautiously before venturing into this territory,” Alito wrote.
In dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that he would have upheld Levy's suspension.
Food, paper, and plastic are known to be major factors when it comes to America's trash; but furniture is high on that list, as well. According to the EPA, furniture makes up twelve million tons of waste in landfills every year. It's a problem that one online furniture store is trying to solve. Alpay Koralturk, Founder & CEO of Kaiyo, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.
Bitcoin surged to its highest level on Monday since January 2nd. The gains also come after a late Sunday rally for the cryptocurrency, when it surpassed the key price of $45,000, and also turned positive for 2022. Matt Hougan, CIO of Bitwise Asset Fund, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss what is behind the recent rallies for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
Founder and CEO of Capital Postal & Mail Box Service, Takisha Clark, joined Cheddar News to talk about being the first black woman to own a postal franchise, the obstacles she faced when launching her business, and how she overcame them. “I ran into just dealing with lack of resources, dealing with just being a black woman, just trying to become this entrepreneur and be inspiring to others, so it's been a journey," she said. "It's been hard, and I've just been maneuvering through the cracks."
Actress, model, author, and entrepreneur Brooke Shields has joined organic CBD company Prospect Farms as its chief brand officer. She joined CEO Brad Tipper to talk to Cheddar News about her coming aboard. Shield’s explained how her involvement with Prospect Farms stemmed from a discussion about her lack of sleep. “I started learning about the positive effects and the different ways that CBD can be introduced to a person's life, and I was just sort of fascinated because it all feels so new to me," she said.
The co-writers and directors of the movie "Everything Everywhere All at Once" Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert joined Cheddar News to discuss their new sci-fi action-comedy starring Michelle Yeoh now in select theaters. The filmmakers talked about bringing the multiverse-traversing plot to life, as well as getting the chance to tell an Asian American story following in the footsteps of successful films like "Crazy Rich Asians." "We like to make films that we want to see on the screen, and even if that means they don't exist or even that means that the world might not be ready for them," said Kwan. "That's what we're chasing. Luckily for us, the movie took so long to make that by the time it was finished or by the time now that it's done, so much has changed."
Paul Mundell, Executive Director of the American Service Dog Access Coalition, joins Cheddar Reveals to discuss why emotional support, therapy, and service dogs are important.
Plastic has become the face of global pollution. To date, humans have produced 8.3 billion metric tons of it. Once discarded, plastic doesn’t biodegrade. Instead, it fragments into microplastics smaller than the size of a sesame seed and further into nanoplastics.
These tiny particles of plastic end up everywhere, deep in the ice of Antarctic glaciers or even inside our bodies.
So how much plastic is inside of us? And what does it mean for our health? Let’s find out.
Catching you up on what you Need to Know on Mar 29, 2022, with updates on the snow squall in Pennsylvania that caused a pileup killing three, the teacher's strike in Sacramento heading into week two, Walmart no longer selling tobacco products in select stores, and what meme stocks are up to this week.
Biden wants the ultra-rich to close the deficit in his new budget proposal, a judge rules Trump's aide must turn over election emails, and Chrome users need to do an update. Here is all the news you Need2Know for Tuesday, March 29, 2022.
