Federal Judge Rules Facebook Rant is Free Speech

I’m still doing light posting, but here’s a story from the Miami Herald that merits attention.

It is about a free speech case involving a student who said some angry things on Facebook about her teacher, and was punished by the school principle as a consequence.

Here’s how it opens:

A student who set up a Facebook page to complain about her teacher –– and was later suspended — had every right to do so under the First Amendment, a federal magistrate has ruled.

The ruling not only allows Katherine “Katie” Evans’ suit against the principal to move forward, it could set a precedent in cases involving speech and social networking on the Internet, experts say.

The courts are in the early stages of exploring the limits of free speech within social networking, said Howard Simon, the executive director of the Florida ACLU, which filed the suit on Evans’ behalf.

“It’s one of the main things that we wanted to establish in this case, that the First Amendment has a life in the social networking technology as it applies to the Internet and other forms of communication,” Simon said.

In 2007, Evans, then a senior at Pembroke Pines Charter High School, created a Facebook page where she vented about “the worst teacher I’ve ever met.”

But instead of other students expressing their dislike of the teacher, most defended the teacher and attacked Evans.

A couple days later, Evans took the page down.

But after Principal Peter Bayer found out about it, he bumped Evan from her Advanced Placement classes, putting her in classes with less prestige, and suspended her for three days.

There’s more. So read it here.

And here’s an MSNBC story about other incidents in which student speech is challenged, even outside school.