Cyberbullying: When Is It "School Speech" and When Is It beyond the School's Reach?
![handle is hein.journals/norester5 and id is 59 raw text is: NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY LAWJOURNAL
Cyberbullying: When is it School Speech
And When is it Beyond the School's Reach?
Susan S. Bendlin'
It would be an unseemly and dangerous precedent to allow the state,
in the guise of school authorities, to reach into a child's home and
control his/her actions there to the same extent that it can control
that child when he/she participates in school sponsored activities.1
I. Overview
What responsibility do public school officials have to control
off-campus internet speech that bullies other students? The answer-
viewed through a constitutional lens-is none. Cyberbullying is a
complex and tragic problem, but it is not necessarily the school's
problem to solve. The special considerations that exist in the school
setting (such as the need to educate and protect students) justify a
school's regulation of speech only when it occurs on campus and dur-
ing school-supervised activities. Outside of the school environment,
those special considerations do not exist. Therefore, if bullying occurs
outside the ambit of the school, there is no constitutional authority
that supports a school's exercise of its disciplinary arm.
The Supreme Court's decisions in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent
Community School District and three subsequent school speech cases
describe the circumstances under which a school has the authority
to regulate a student's speech. In Tinker, the Supreme Court declared
it permissible for schools to regulate students' on-campus speech if
the speech materially and substantially interfere [s] with the require-
ments of appropriate discipline in the operation of the school, if the
Assistant Professor, Barry University School of Law, and former Dean of
Students at three law schools, Emory, Duke, and Barry. The author would like
to thank her research assistants, Eric S. Heidel J.D., 2012) and Amy German
J.D., 2013).
1 Layshock ex rel. Layshock v. Hermitage Sch. Dist., 650 F3d 205, 216 (3d Cir.
2011), cert. denied, 132 S. Ct. 1097 (2012).
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Cyberbullying: When Is It "School Speech" and When Is It beyond the School's Reach?
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