Student online speech rights on and off campus

Nearly 50 years ago, Justice Abe Fortas penned those words when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a school’s action to discipline students who wore black armbands to protest the Vietnam War. Justice Fortas’ opinion held that administrators could discipline a student only when they could reasonably forecast that the student’s speech would cause a substantial disruption to the school.

The language of “schoolhouse gate” seems archaic today. The boundaries of speech today really don’t rest on the physical boundaries of the “schoolhouse gate.” We are no longer just faced with the students’ right to speech in the school hallways. What about their rights vis-a-vis the school when they are outside of the “schoolhouse gate” sitting at home or in a coffee shop blogging, tweeting, and posting? Does the school have any control or recourse when students post and text after school hours on their own devices and outside the physical confines of the school? Justice Fortas could not have been thinking about a Facebook post when he penned those landmark words. However outdated the court’s language may seem now, its overarching conclusion is still very relevant today.

In terms of student speech on campus, schools clearly have the authority to limit speech that is disruptive, lewd or vulgar, or encourages the use of illegal drugs. When the speech is off-campus, a school’s authority is not so clear. Do schools have the authority to discipline students for speech that was created or emanated off school grounds?