HARRISBURG – A 6-1 majority of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania ruled that Manheim Township School District officials acted outside the scope of their authority, when they expelled a 17 year-old high school student for an after-hours Snapchat meme which labeled a fellow classmate as a possible school shooter.
State Supreme Court Justice Debra Todd authored the Nov. 17 ruling, which was joined by fellow justices Max Baer, Christine Donohue, David N. Wecht, Thomas G. Saylor and Sallie Updyke Mundy.
Justice Kevin M. Dougherty dissented from his colleagues in this matter.
J.S., a high school junior student in the Manheim Township School was initially suspended and later expelled over a series of Snapchat messages sent to a friend in April 2018.
The messages in question derided a classmate, stating he looked like a potential school shooter because he wore long hair and T-shirts bearing the name of death metal band Cannibal Corpse.
The recipient of the messages shared them with 20-40 other students before deleting them at J.S.’s request. However, one of those students informed his parent, a school district employee, who then notified the Manheim Township High School principal. Police who responded to the incident determined there was no imminent threat, and administrators told parents and teachers about the incident.
Though J.S. told school officials he was joking and intended the online conversation to remain private, the District suspended him in April 2018 and expelled him from Manheim Township High School the following month.
However, Lancaster County Court of Common Pleas Judge Leonard G. Brown III overturned the expulsion and J.S. also garnered a favorable decision in the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania to that same effect.
J.S. completed his high school education elsewhere and is now a college student.
Todd said that the messages needed to be examined in context, with a specific focus given to the speaker’s intent, and that reviewing them here showed that J.S. was not sharing a genuine threat of harm.
“Ultimately, we believe that, considering the totality of the circumstances, J.S. did not intend to communicate a serious expression of an intent to inflict harm, intimidate or threaten the recipient of the message,” Todd said.
“While mean-spirited, sophomoric, inartful, misguided and crude, in our view, J.S.’s memes were plainly not intended to threaten Student One, Student Two or any other person, and they certainly were not perceived as threatening by the sole recipient, Student One, whose mild reactions to the communication further support the conclusion that there was a lack of any intent on the part of J.S. to threaten. In short, our review of the record reveals that J.S.’s memes did not constitute a true threat.”
In his dissent, Dougherty said the case “presents an opportunity for this Court to squarely address a significant issue of first impression pertaining to the due process rights of students facing school discipline”, but felt the Court did not do so.
“There is simply no possibility – theoretical or otherwise – of a remand, the only potential purpose of which would be to hold a new expulsion hearing. This conclusion is inescapable for one simple reason: J.S. is no longer a student within the Manheim Township School District. Notably, J.S. was a 17 year-old 11th Grade student at the time this incident occurred, more than three years ago in April of 2018,” Dougherty said.
“The trial court sustained J.S.’s appeal and ordered his expulsion expunged in February of 2019, and the School District’s appeals have extended the duration of this case well past the natural point at which J.S. would have graduated or moved on. And since a school’s power to suspend or expel is limited to ‘any pupil on account of disobedience or misconduct,’ it necessarily follows that the school has no authority to retroactively seek to punish an individual, like J.S., who is a former pupil, but not a current one. Thus, contrary to the majority’s belief, there is no conceivable circumstance under which a remand would be warranted in this case.”
Dougherty opined that it was “more logical to first decide whether the procedure underlying J.S.’s expulsion was tainted before deciding whether, as a substantive matter, the expulsion so imposed violates the First Amendment,” and dissented on that basis.
Supreme Court of Pennsylvania case 2 MAP 2021
Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania case 341 C.D. 2019
Lancaster County Court of Common Pleas case CI-18-04246
From the Pennsylvania Record: Reach Courts Reporter Nicholas Malfitano at nick.malfitano@therecordinc.com