HARRISBURG – According to a recent opinion from the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania, a Delaware County school district’s decision to expel a student over a violently-themed Snapchat post violated that student’s free speech rights as protected by the U.S. Constitution.
The Commonwealth Court ruled on Jan. 7 that minor plaintiff and student G.S. was improperly punished by the Rose Tree Media School District and reversed lower court rulings, because the District did not take into the context the circumstances under which he made his Snapchat message.
While attending an Easter Sunday event with family, and neither on-campus nor involved in school activities at the time, G.S. wrote and posted a Snapchat message which included the phrase, “I will f—king kill off all of you!”
The message was captured through screenshots and circulated through the Rose Tree Media School District community and administration, before coming to the attention of the Pennsylvania State Police and Penncrest High School.
While students stayed home from the school the following day out of fear, Delaware County law enforcement arrested G.S. and charged him with making terroristic threats and harassment.
Though temporarily housed in juvenile detention, G.S. was released after a psychologist found he possessed no intent to behave violently. Additionally, it was later learned that the message’s threatening words were actually quoted lyrics from the song “Snap” by Spite, a death metal band.
Nonetheless, a school hearing officer’s subsequent finding that G.S. had disrupted the learning process in a significant way (but stopping short of labeling his act a “threat”) led to him being expelled from Penncrest High School.
The Commonwealth Court felt the content and context should be the top priority of evaluating such threatening messages, rather than what the effect of the post is.
“The School District would have us evaluate the constitutional sanctity of disciplining students for disruptions caused by off-campus speech through an analytical framework that would assign great value to the societal response to such speech, but disregard the context in which it was uttered, as well as the intent of the speaker. We decline to accept the School District’s deeply problematic suggestion,” Commonwealth Court Judge Ellen Ceisler said.
“Were we to do otherwise, the result would be to imbue public schools with the power to discipline their students for publically expressing interests or sentiments that school administrators, faculty, or members of polite society considered execrable or simply did not understand, regardless of how, when, where, or why that expressive conduct occurred.”
In that circumstance, Ceisler said, public schools would “consequently become de facto full-time censors, preventing children from making their own decisions about what aspects of popular culture are worthy of consumption or what beliefs should be held, and interfering with parental authority, through a constant potential for punishment that would hang over students like the Sword of Damocles.”
The Commonwealth Court’s decision is in line with a recent Supreme Court of Pennsylvania ruling in J.S. v. Manheim Township School District, which found that such controversial messages needed to be examined in context, with a specific focus given to the speaker’s intent.
Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania cases 843 M.D. 2020 & 869 M.D. 2020
From the Pennsylvania Record: Reach Courts Reporter Nicholas Malfitano at nick.malfitano@therecordinc.com