Washington (AP) — A wary Supreme Court has weighed whether public schools can discipline students for things they say off-campus.
The justices on Wednesday worried about overly restricting speech on the one hand and leaving educators powerless to deal with bullying on the other. They struggled to fit the need to protect students’ political and religious expression with the ability of schools to get at disruptive, even potentially dangerous, speech that occurs outside the school setting.
The court tested out possible outcomes in the case of a 14-year-old cheerleader’s profanity-laced social media rant, which Justice Brett Kavanaugh described as her blowing off steam just like “millions of kids” do.
