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Sunday, September 27, 2009
Courts - "The right of students across the country to speak their minds in blogs and text messages at stake"
Updating this entry from July 17, 2007, and this one from Feb. 20, 2009, today the Waterbury Connecticut American-Republican has a long story reported by Jim Moore, headed "Blogger to be back in court Former Mills High student's suit before U.S. appeals panel." It begins:
Avery Doninger will soon return to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals with the right of students across the country to speak their minds in blogs and text messages at stake.Once a 16-year-old high school junior who referred to school administrators as "douchebags" in an online blog post protesting the potential cancellation of a school concert, Doninger, 19, is now a freshman at Eastern Connecticut State University who plans, after a year spent volunteering for AmeriCorps in Colorado, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, to make a career in nonprofit management.
Her federal lawsuit against former Region 10 Superintendent Paula Schwartz and Lewis S. Mills High School Principal Karissa L. Niehoff, who disqualified Doninger from election as senior class secretary when the infamous blog post came to their attention, is expected to be heard, perhaps for the final time, later this year.
There is no guarantee that the U.S. Supreme Court would agree to hear an appeal from either side, and no guarantee the remaining questions of law will return to U.S. District Court in New Haven.
According to the argument presented by the Virginia-based Student Press Law Center in a "friend of the court" brief, Doninger's post — which urged readers to contact administrators in support of the endangered concert — is especially deserving of protection.
"The lower court's decision would send the wrong message to civics classes, for it unmistakably says that a student may not exercise her First Amendment rights to encourage others to challenge a governmental decision," wrote SPLC attorney Joseph P. Esposito.
U.S. District Court Judge Mark R. Kravitz has twice rejected Doninger's claim that her Constitutional right to free speech was violated by the decision to disqualify her class officer bid, though he left for a jury trial the question of whether administrators crossed that line blocking students from wearing T-shirts with slogans supporting Doninger into the class election assembly held in May 2007.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on September 27, 2009 04:19 PM
Posted to Courts in general