## Facts

- Amanda Tatro, a student in the University of Minnesota’s Mortuary Science Program, participated in an anatomy lab using donated cadavers managed through the University’s Anatomy Bequest Program.
- The program issued students lab rules at orientation and in course materials stressing respectful treatment of cadavers as a condition of participation.
- The rules prohibited “disrespectful conversational language” outside the lab about cadaver dissection and prohibited “blogging about the anatomy lab or the cadaver dissection.”
- Tatro posted Facebook status updates viewable to a broad audience (friends and friends-of-friends) describing the cadaver and lab work in a satirical, violent, and disrespectful manner, including references to “playing” with the cadaver, keeping a lock of hair, and using a trocar as a weapon against “a certain someone.”
- A fellow student reported the posts; the matter was referred to the Office for Student Conduct and Academic Integrity.
- The Campus Committee on Student Behavior found that Tatro violated both the Student Conduct Code and the mortuary science program’s cadaver-related rules.
- The University imposed sanctions including a failing grade in the lab course, completion of a clinical ethics course, a written psychological evaluation, and probation; the provost affirmed.
- Tatro sought review by writ of certiorari, asserting that the discipline violated the First Amendment and the Minnesota Constitution’s free-speech protections.

## Issues

1. Whether a public university violates a student’s free-speech rights by disciplining off-campus, online speech when the speech violates academic program rules tied to professional standards.
2. Whether the mortuary science program’s cadaver-related rules were constitutionally permissible restrictions as applied to Tatro’s Facebook posts.

## Decision

- The Minnesota Supreme Court affirmed the discipline and the result reached by the court of appeals, but applied a different First Amendment analysis.
- The court held the University did not violate Tatro’s free-speech rights by imposing sanctions for Facebook posts that violated academic program rules that were narrowly tailored and directly related to established professional conduct standards.
- The court treated Minnesota’s constitutional free-speech protection as coextensive with the First Amendment for purposes of the case.
- The court declined to broadly apply K–12 student-speech doctrine (including a general substantial-disruption approach) as the governing standard for this university-professional-program context.

## Legal Principles

- Public university students retain First Amendment protection, and a university’s academic freedom does not categorically bar speech-based constitutional challenges.
- A public university may enforce rules in a professional academic program that restrict student speech when the rules are:
  - clearly communicated in advance,
  - narrowly tailored, and
  - directly related to established professional conduct standards governing the field for which the program trains students.
- “Professionalism” cannot be used as a pretext to punish protected speech or to impose viewpoint-based restrictions unrelated to professional standards.
- In evaluating discipline within a professional program, the relevant question is whether the sanction enforces curriculum-linked professional standards rather than suppressing disfavored expression as such.

## Conclusion

The Minnesota Supreme Court upheld the University’s sanctions, concluding that a public university may discipline off-campus social-media speech by a student in a professional program when the speech violates narrowly tailored, clearly stated program rules that implement established professional conduct standards.


Tatro v. Univ. of Minn., 816 N.W.2d 509 (Minn. 2012)