## Facts

- J.S. was an eighth-grade student at Blue Mountain Middle School in Pennsylvania.
- After J.S. was disciplined at school for dress-code violations, she and a friend (K.L.) decided to mock their principal, James McGonigle.
- On Sunday, March 18, 2007, while off campus and outside school hours, J.S. and K.L. used a personal computer at J.S.’s home to create a fake MySpace profile for the principal.
- The profile used the principal’s photograph and included lewd, vulgar language and personal attacks on the principal and his family, including an accusation of sexual misconduct.
- The profile did not use the principal’s real name and did not identify the school; it was written in a clearly juvenile style that signaled parody.
- The profile was publicly available for less than a day; afterward, J.S. limited access to approved MySpace users, including about 22 students in the school district.
- Students discussed the profile at school, but they could not view it on school computers because MySpace was blocked.
- The only known copy of the profile brought onto school grounds was a paper copy that the principal asked a student to provide.
- School counselors rescheduled some activities while the school addressed the situation, but there was no measurable disruption to classes, school discipline, or day-to-day operations.
- The School District suspended J.S. for 10 days for violating school rules involving obscene/vulgar language, harassment, and disrespect toward staff.
- J.S. and her parents sued under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging violations of J.S.’s First Amendment rights, unconstitutional overbreadth and vagueness in the policies used to punish her, and violation of the parents’ Fourteenth Amendment substantive due process rights.
- The district court granted summary judgment for the School District, and J.S. appealed. A prior panel decision was vacated when the Third Circuit took the case en banc.

## Issues

1. Whether a public school may discipline a student for off-campus, online parody speech about a school official when the speech causes no substantial disruption at school and school officials lack a reasonable basis to forecast such disruption under *Tinker*.
2. Whether the School District’s student conduct policies were unconstitutionally overbroad or void for vagueness as applied or on their face.
3. Whether the suspension violated the parents’ substantive due process right to direct the upbringing of their child.

## Decision

- The en banc Third Circuit held that suspending J.S. for the off-campus MySpace parody violated the First Amendment.
- Applying *Tinker*’s substantial-disruption framework, the court found the record showed no substantial disruption in school and no reasonable forecast of substantial disruption.
- The court declined to extend Supreme Court student-speech categories tied to school settings (such as regulation of lewd on-campus speech) to this off-campus, non-school-sponsored internet parody in the absence of a *Tinker* disruption showing.
- The court affirmed the district court’s rejection of the overbreadth and vagueness challenges to the School District’s policies.
- The court affirmed the district court’s rejection of the parents’ Fourteenth Amendment substantive due process claim.
- Disposition: reversed and remanded on J.S.’s First Amendment claim; affirmed as to the remaining claims.

## Legal Principles

- Under *Tinker v. Des Moines*, a public school generally may regulate student speech only if the speech causes, or school officials can reasonably forecast, a substantial disruption of school operations or interference with the rights of others.
- Supreme Court decisions allowing broader regulation of student speech in specific school-connected settings (e.g., lewd speech at school, school-sponsored speech, or speech at a school-supervised event) do not automatically apply to student speech created off campus with private resources.
- Off-campus internet speech about school officials may be subject to school discipline only if the required *Tinker* disruption showing is met on the record.
- A school policy is not facially invalid for overbreadth or vagueness merely because it is applied unconstitutionally in a particular instance; the challenger must meet the separate standards for those doctrines.
- A student’s school discipline does not, without more, violate parents’ substantive due process rights to direct their child’s upbringing.

## Conclusion

The Third Circuit (en banc) ruled that the School District could not suspend J.S. for an off-campus MySpace parody profile of the principal because it caused no substantial disruption at school and could not reasonably have been expected to do so, making the punishment inconsistent with the First Amendment, while leaving intact the district court’s rulings rejecting the policy overbreadth/vagueness claims and the parents’ due process claim.


JS ex rel. Snyder v. Blue Mountain School District, 650 F.3d 915 (2011)