Triggering Tinker: Student Speech in the Age of Cyberharassment

Authors

Ari Ezra Waldman, New York Law School

Abstract

This essay challenges the common assumption that public schools have limited authority to regulate cyberbullying that originates and takes place off campus. That argument presumes a level of myopia, clarity, and literalism in the law that simply does not exist. First, even assuming it existed, a geographic requirement is an outdated creature of a pre-Internet age. Cyberbullying poses unique challenges to young people, educators, and schools not contemplated when the Court decided its student speech cases. Second, I argue that a campus presence requirement for regulating any kind of off-campus cyberspeech never really existed, so any suggestion to the contrary offers false clarity based entirely on dicta or assumptions. And third, to the extent that the Court referred to the geographic boundaries of a school in its quartet of student speech cases, the justices’ words cannot be taken too literally. Like references to the four walls of the office in public employee speech cases, a campus presence requirement is just a proxy for or a paradigmatic example of applying a broader, more flexible standard focused on relationships: between the victim and her harasser and between them and the school.

Recommended Citation

Ari Ezra Waldman, Triggering Tinker: Student Speech in the Age of Cyberharassment, 71 U. Mia. L. Rev. 428 (2017)
Available at: https://repository.law.miami.edu/umlr/vol71/iss2/6