Suspended on Saturday - The Constitutionality of the Cyberbullying Act of 2007
![handle is hein.journals/arklr62 and id is 791 raw text is: Suspended on Saturday? The Constitutionality
of the Cyberbullying Act of 2007*
I. INTRODUCTION
In August 2004, Justin Neal and Ryan Kuhl were
suspended from high school in Greenwood, Arkansas.1 Neal
and Kuhl did not start a fight, break the dress code, or bring
drugs or weapons to school. Rather, they were suspended
because of the contents of their personal web pages, which they
created off-campus, outside of school hours. Kuhl's online
journal, titled F[***] Greenwood, was critical of the school
and its administrators, calling a recent school orientation
dreadfully boring.3 Neal's website contained a satirical
animated comic strip in which a school official shot at students.4
Claiming civil rights violations, Neal and Kuhl sued their
principal.5 In 2005, the United States District Court for the
Western District of Arkansas held that the students had been
wrongfully suspended and ordered the students to be reinstated.6
The court held that because the students' speech did not create a
disruption in school, it was protected by the First Amendment to
the United States Constitution.7
As a result of this case, and in response to a growing
concern about the potential for disruption in public schools
caused by students' personal websites or online journals,8 the
Arkansas General Assembly passed Act 115 in 2007, requiring
* The author wishes to thank Ned Snow, Assistant Professor of Law, University of
Arkansas School of Law, and Diana Maxwell, J.D. 2009, University of Arkansas School of
Law, for the guidance and insight they provided throughout the drafting of this comment.
1. Students' Off-Campus Web Publications Out of Schools' Reach, Two Courts
Affirm, STUDENT PRESS L. CTR. REP., Spring 2005, at 15.
2. Id.
3. id.
4. Id.
5. Neal v. Efurd, Civ. No. 04-2195, at 1-2 (W.D. Ark. Feb. 18, 2005), http://www.
splc.org/pdf/nealvefurd.pdf.
6. See id. at 27-28.
7. Id. at 25-26.
8. Evie Blad, Networking Web Sites Enable New Generation of Bullies, ARK.
DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE, Apr. 6, 2008, at lB.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/arklr62&div=37&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Suspended on Saturday - The Constitutionality of the Cyberbullying Act of 2007
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