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Supreme Court Refuses to Censor Students’ Online Attacks
The U.S Supreme Court has declined to take up cases involving online attacks by students on school officials and their peers, passing on a set of cases where schools wanted to censor students who made...
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How Much Should Schools Police Off-Campus Facebook Speech?
Wendy Kaminer, writing in the Atlantic, talks about the increasingly common issue of schools disciplining students for things they say off campus. Schools, universities and workplaces have been...
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Censorship of Free Speech on College Campuses Grows
The advent of social media and its growing popularity on college campuses means that students now have a much bigger platform to exercise their First Amendment rights to free speech. However, as the...
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FIRE Spotlights Illinois State’s Speech and Conduct Policy
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education is using this month’s edition of Speech Code of the Month to examine the policies dealing with free expression at the Illinois State University. The...
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Schools Walk Fine Line In Punishing Students’ Online Speech
Schools are walking a fine line between not restricting their students’ First Amendment rights and attempting to curb what some perceive as abusive cyberbullying of faculty members. The Wall Street...
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Why Do Universities Design Policies to Restrict Free Speech?
Americans are forever on the lookout for institutions that can threaten their most cherished right — that of free speech. But even the most paranoid among us would not think that the place where the...
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2012 Free to Tweet Campaign Highlights First Amendment
Last year’s “Free to Tweet” campaign could be judged a success by any measure — over 17,000 tweets, including some from celebrities and even the White House, celebrated and commemorated the freedoms...
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Should Students be Protected from Consequences of Speech?
Presidential elections, especially closely-fought ones, sometimes bring out the worst in the country’s citizens. That seemed to have been the case this November, when, after the reelection of...
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Wisconsin County Makes Cyberbullying a Crime
Cyberbullying isn’t just wrong in Vernon County, Wisconsin. After this week, electronic messages that annoy, offend or ridicule are now criminal. Yesterday, the county voted to approve the...
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Controversy Becoming a Regular Feature of High School Graduation
In a column for Yahoo! Shine, Beth Greenfield notes that high school graduations have become tinged with controversy this year thanks to a number of well-publicized incidents between schools and their...
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Teacher, Student Opinion Clash Results in First Amendment Flap
Last week, Judge Patrick Duggan of the US District Court in Detroit ruled that Howell High School teacher Johnson McDowell violated a student’s First Amendment Rights by kicking the student out for...
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More School Districts Monitoring, Restricting Student Social Media Activity
As social media becomes an everyday element of teenagers’ lives — for better and for worse — schools are scrambling to adapt to a medium that largely lives outside school grounds, but often has...
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Dept of Ed Dismisses Anti-Semitism Complaint Against UC Berkeley
In a victory for the University of California – Berkeley, the Office for Civil Rights of the US Department of Education has dismissed a complaint filed by two attorneys alleging that the university...
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FIRE, Bill of Rights Institute Unite to Teach Students First Amendment
To coincide with Constitution Day last week, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, together with the Bill of Rights Institute, launched a curriculum titled the College Bill of Rights,...
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Should Schools Spy On Students’ Online Speech?
Technology has become cheaper, easier to use and more powerful — for both kids and those in charge of delivering their education, which means it has become relatively easy for school administrators to...
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Oregon State Out $101,000 Over Tossed Newspaper Bins
Oregon State University must pay $101,000 in legal fees and damages to a former editor of the school’s alternative paper, The Liberty, and the organization that represented him, the Alliance...
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New York Cyberbullying Law Questioned as Too Vague
The New York State Court of Appeals is considering the constitutionality of a 2010 Albany County law on cyberbullying. The Albany law makes it a crime to communicate “private, personal, false, or...
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New York Court Deems Cyberbullying Law Unconstitutional
In a 5-2 decision, New York’s Court of Appeals deemed a 2010 Albany County law that criminalizes cyberbullying to be unconstitutional this past Tuesday. The law, designed to protect children, was...
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Professor Wins First Amendment Battle with Univ. of North Carolina
In a settlement reached this week, a seven-year legal battle between Professor Mike Adams and the University of North Carolina Wilmington (UNCW) has finally come to an end, as Adams will receive his...
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Football Coach’s Prayers Could Spell Trouble for Georgia High School
Football coaches at Chestatee High School in Gainesville, Georgia are facing criticism for leading their team in prayer and including scripture on official team documents. Jennifer Brown from the...
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