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On June 23^rd, 2021 the Supreme Court of the United States in case of Mahanoy Area School District v. B. L., upholding the right to free speech as provided by First Amendment of U.S. Constitution, held that a public school has no right to regulate student speech off campus in guise of preventive measures against disruption.

The Court observed,

“Schools have a special interest in regulating on-campus student speech that “materially disrupts class-work or involves substantial disorder or invasion of the rights of others. 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 bullying or harassment targeting particular individuals; threats aimed at teachers or other students; the failure to follow rules concerning lessons, the writing of papers, the use of computers, or participation in other online school activities; and breaches of school security devices.”

Reinstating B.L.’s (the minor girl) the U.S. Supreme Court 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.”

Mahanoy Area High School student B. L., while visiting a local convenience store over the weekend posted two images on Snapchat, a social media application for smartphones. 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 up­coming year.

The District Court granted an injunction ordering the school to reinstate B. L. to the cheerleading team. 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 too.

The Supreme Court affirmed, holding that the high school violated B.L.’s First Amendment rights remarked,

“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 campus. 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 regulate off-campus speech, for doing so may mean the student cannot engage in that kind of speech at all. Third, the school itself has an interest 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.”

In so concluding, the Court explained that, due to the wide variety of off-campus speech students might conceivably engage in, a school’s license to regulate student speech does not always evaporate when it attempts to regulate off-campus speech.

Justice Breyer delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Alito, Sotomayor, Kagan, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett joined. Justice Alito filed a concurring opinion, in which Justice Gorsuch joined. Justice Thomas filed a dissenting opinion.