Filed under: MySpace, Web, Social Networking
A U.S. appeals court ruled Thursday that schools can legally suspend students for creating fake MySpace profiles, but only if the fabricated online personas poses some sort of school disruption. A three judge panel in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania came to their decision after a student posted a sexually explicit parody of her principal on her fake MySpace page. The panel ruled that the school could legitimately expect the post to disrupt normal school activities, and thus granted authorities the right to suspend the student. As HuffPo reports, though, another Pennsylvania court in Mercer County ruled, in a nearly identical case, that high schools don’t have the right to regulate a student’s digital activity at home, arguing that a child’s MySpace posts fell under the umbrella of his or her right to free speech.As social networking has become more prevalent in middle and high schools around the country, school authorities have been seeking some sort of definitive ruling on whether or not they have the right to police students on the Internet. As Witold Walczak of the ACLU tells the Washington Post, “The law was unclear and now it’s in a state of chaos.” To make matters worse, a case of this nature hasn’t yet reached the Supreme Court, so lower courts are forced to use older high court rulings on the boundaries of school jurisdiction as their only legal compass.
Continue reading Judge Rules Students Can Be Suspended for Fake MySpace Pages
Judge Rules Students Can Be Suspended for Fake MySpace Pages originally appeared on Switched on Sat, 06 Feb 2010 12:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
