Freedom of Speech on Social Media: Legal Insights and Cases
School
Bridgewater State University**We aren't endorsed by this school
Course
ACFI 305
Subject
Communications
Date
Dec 12, 2024
Pages
2
Uploaded by MateToadMaster102
Skylar TranACFI 305Freedom of speech and FacebookCan you deny access to social media sites?In 2015, J.R. Gerrard, a 21 male college student became a convicted sex offender after he pleaded guilty to taking indecent liberties with a child – having sex with a 13-year-old girl. He recently got into trouble with the law again, when he posted on Facebook to thank God for having a traffic ticket dismissed. After a police officer saw his post, Packingham was prosecutedand convicted under Massachusetts law that makes it a felony for a convicted sex offender to use social-networking websites, such as Facebook and Twitter, that allow minors to create accounts. At the trial, the grand jury convicted him of violating the Massachusetts statute, which henow appealed his conviction to the MAssachusetts Supreme Judicial Court on First Amendmentgrounds. Is Massachusetts’ law arbitrary burdens on all registered sex offenders by preventing awide range of communication overruling the US’s First Amendment, freedom of speech? Fundamental principle of the First Amendment is that everyone should “have access to places where they can speak and listen, and then, after reflection, speak and listen once more.” And even if once it may have been hard to determine which places are “the most important” “for the exchange of views. The Internet and, in particular, social media provide such opportunities, with everyone online now. Massachusetts’ law cannot pass constitutional muster. I agree with the state that sex offenders should not be able to have access to targeted victims like children – the stated purpose of the law, but to ban all access to social media altogether is to prevent the user from engaging in the legitimate exercise of First Amendment rights. The US Supreme court ruled that the First Amendment prohibited the foreclosing of Gerrard’s access to social media.Give me a…Regulating Student speechMissy Pantone, a student at Bridgewater-Raynham Area High School, auditioned and failed to make her high school's varsity cheerleading team, but made the junior varsity team. Over a weekend and away from school, she posted a picture of herself on Snapchat with the caption “Fuck school fuck softball fuck cheer fuck everything.” The photo was visible to about 250 people, many of whom were Bridgewater-Raynham’s students and some of whom were cheerleaders. Several students who saw the captioned photo approached the coach and expressed concern that the snap was inappropriate. The coaches decided Missy’s snap violatedteam and school rules, which she had acknowledged before joining the team, and she was suspended from the junior varsity team for a year.Missy sued the school alleging that her suspension from the team violated the First Amendment that the school and team rules were overbroad and viewpoint discriminatory; and that those rules were unconstitutionally vague. The district court found that the judgment in Missy’s had indeed violated her First Amendment rights. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the ThirdCircuit affirmed. Public schools can regulate student speech and conduct, but students don’t lose their constitutional rights when they enter campus. The Court allows schools to limit speech in three cases of indecent or vulgar speech on school grounds, speech promoting drug use during school events and speech that seems to represent the school, like in a school-sponsored newspaper.Moreover, in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, 393 U.S. 503 (1969), the Court held that schools may also regulate speech that “materially disrupts classwork or involves substantial disorder or invasion of the rights of others.” In Pantone's case
it is clear that her speech did not cause “substantial disruption” at the school according to the District Court. Schools still have an interest in regulating student speech even when it occurs off-campus. Three reasons reduce the need for First Amendment flexibility: off-campus speech is usually a parental responsibility, not a school one, regulating both off-campus and on-campus speech could prevent students from expressing themselves at all, and schools should protect unpopular off-campus speech since free expression is vital to democracy. So in this case, it is Pantone’s mom and dad’s responsibility, not hers. The First Amendment limits but does not entirely prohibit regulation of off-campus student speech by public school officials, and, in this case, the school district’s decision to suspend Missy from the cheerleading team for posting to social media vulgar language and gestures critical of the school violates the First Amendment.