Academic

Abrams on Public School Authority Over Off-Campus Cyberbullying

By Lawrence Solum

Douglas E. Abrams (University of Missouri School of Law) has posted Recognizing the Public Schools? Authority to Discipline Students? Off-Campus Cyberbullying of Classmates (New England Journal on Criminal and Civil Confinement, Forthcoming) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

The American Medical Association, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have identified bullying in the public elementary and secondary schools as a "public health problem". This article explains the schools' comprehensive authority, consistent with the First Amendment, to impose discipline on cyberbullies, by suspension or expulsion if necessary.

Ever since Tinker v. Des Moines Independent School District (1969), the Supreme Court's First Amendment decisions have granted the schools authority to discipline student speech that causes, or reasonably threatens, (1) "substantial disruption of or material interference with school activities", or (2) "collision with the rights of other students to be secure and to be let alone". To fulfill their "basic educational mission", school authorities may also discipline cyberbullying that compromises efforts to teach "the boundaries of socially appropriate behavior", "habits and manners of civility" and respect for "the sensibilities of fellow students".

In the Internet Age, the Court?s holdings reach cyberbullying, including messages that a student sends from off campus but foresees will have the requisite harmful effect on campus.

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on March 18, 2011 (boomark / email).