It was on Snapchat. That makes a difference, because it was intended to be private, and automatically deleted after 24 hours. It was not intended to be public, and it was certainly not ‘all but certain’ to come to the attention of the school.
If she had written the same thing in a private note to a friend on paper, and the friend had then showed it the school, it would be a similar situation.
I couldn’t disagree more. Posting something to Snapchat is not “private” in any sense of the word. She had more than 250 “friends” who could see the message. As I said upthread, you could not fit that many people in a business meeting room at a local hotel, which such meeting is in no way private.
Some of her “friends” were also members of the school and of the team. A social media post like this can be downloaded, copied, emailed, or shared with mouse clicks. Given the provocative nature of it, it is all but certain to find its way back on school grounds, and indeed it did in this situation.
If I write a note to one single friend, perhaps he may betray my trust, perhaps he will use his lawn mowing money to go to the local Kinkos and make copies of it, and perhaps he will show it to the coach.
But that is worlds away from what social media does.
Regardless of the student’s misjudgement, it was clearly not her intention that it should be public.
All social media is not the same. It’s not as though she posted it on Facebook or Twitter.
She intentionally showed it to two…hundred…fifty people! How is that just like a private whisper to a couple of gal pals in her bedroom?
That was why I said misjudgement. That’s a different thing from intention.
Anyhow, a conservative-leaning Supreme Court disagrees with you by an 8-1 majority.
They held:
(2) The circumstances of B. L.’s speech diminish the school’s interest in regulation. B. L.’s posts appeared outside of school hours from a location outside the school. She did not identify the school in her posts or target any member of the school community with vulgar or abusive language. B. L. also transmitted her speech through a personal cellphone, to an audience consisting of her private circle of Snapchat friends.
If I invite 250 people to a party, can it still be a private event?
Of course. Try gate-crashing a wedding reception and claiming it isn’t a private event.
Exactly: the number of people she had in her Snapchat circle is immaterial.
Yes, the point is that the message wasn’t openly available to the school authorities or anyone outside that (admittedly large) circle.
In order for the school to know about it, it was necessary that some catty ‘friend’ should
Ken “Popehat” White summarizes this decision in three tweets.
WHY DO WE EVEN PAY YOU PEOPLE
SCOTUS: we rule for student free speech but not in a way that effectively stops censorship
Alito: I hate free speech and therefore will only concur resentfully
Thomas: beat all children with sticks
Another SCOTUS case that yields a standard that sounds like when I ask my mother-in-law how much mustard goes in her potato salad recipe. “not too much!”
https://twitter.com/Popehat/status/1407710398007021575?s=19
Which is all but certain to happen in a group that large, and it indeed did happen.
Have you ever used Snapchat? Do you know how it works? Because you’ve made this assertion a few times, and I think the only way it makes sense is if you have no idea how Snapchat actually works.
Educate me then. Does the picture and caption not go out to 250 people?
Based on the articles described, she did NOT send a Snap to 250 people. That’s something you can easily do - take a picture, select who to send it to; they get a notification and can see the picture by opening the message, whenever they want (even weeks later); but once opened they can only see it for a number of seconds (4 to 10 I think, you set it when you send the Snap). You can also replay a snap but the original sender gets notified that you did.
What she did is post to her Snapchat Story. This makes the picture available (for her friends only) to see for 24 hours; you can go look at them multiple times if you want, but only if you are her friend on Snapchat and specifically seek her profile out - others won’t get a specific notification.
So she didn’t reach out to 250 people with a private message. It isn’t really equivalent to posting to Facebook either. Snapchat is very much its own thing.
Note that in both cases, if someone screenshots your Snapchat you are notified. So while I agree that, from a decision making perspective, anyone posting anything to the internet - even texting one specific person - should assume that whatever they’re sending will become public info - Snapchat IS materially different from directly messaging 250 people or a Facebook post.
My main takeaway from the summary of what happened is astonishment that adults let themselves get this wrapped up in juvenile gossip. Some teenagers were “visibly upset” 
about some milquetoast online profanity toward an extracurricular hobby, and what must have been dozens of adults indulged this dramatic performance all the way to the US Supreme Court? Why?
I would assume she had around 250 Snapchat friends, which is where the number comes from, since theoretically all 250 of them could go look at the message. But I highly doubt anywhere near all of those kids are actually active on Snapchat, and it would greatly surprise me if anyone other than her close friends checked her profile to begin with, at least until drama started circulating and other kids sought it out.
I appreciate the follow up to help me understand Snapchat better. However, I stand by my earlier statements (and I think you somewhat agree) that posting something on social media which can be viewed by 250 people, is qualitatively different than what a prior poster described as writing something to your friend on a piece of notebook paper.
I understand frustration, and I have engaged in it a few times. I’m sure I have come home, had a few beers and got semi-buzzed and told my wife that my boss could go fuck himself and shove his job up his ass. The thing with that is that I trust my wife, she understands my frustration, and the comment will disappear into neverland.
If I post it on social media, it is there forever. In fact, these posts are part of the United States Reports. This could and should have been a valuable teaching moment for this young lady, but the Court has held that it was her Constitutional right to do it. I have some real trouble with that.
I honestly don’t understand this reaction. I’m not a Puritan and don’t need a fainting couch to protect me from the utter shock of the profanity I hear.
I just think that it is a very reasonable reaction for school authorities (or parents) to teach a 14 year old that her vulgar and obscene reactions to not making the team are inappropriate and she should conduct herself in a better way. Punishment is a part of that.
As I said earlier, this will just prepare her for the adult world. If she is a member of a social organization and she flips them off and says “fuck them” in a picture on social media, then she will likely be banned from the organization. Schools are there to teach.
Maybe a year was too much, but I don’t think courts should be appeals from school discipline.
Schools are not social organizations.
You put the schools ahead of the parents. You wrote that. YOU WROTE THAT.
I totally agree. A common-sense reaction by the coach when told about what the girl had said would have been to say to the informant, “Don’t tell tales!” and ignored it.
For the school authorities to take the case all the way up to the Supreme Court, after lower courts had found against them - twice - was complete and utter idiocy. It was childish. They are the ones who behaved immaturely and need to learn a lesson.