Jason’s speech is protected by the First Amendment

I fully agree with the District Court and the First Circuit Court on the ruling for the school district against Jason, a high school student that wrote a facebook post during school hours and on school campus that included vulgar and offensive words towards his fellow classmates in which he named in the post. When first looking at this case you can either apply the Supreme Court precedent set in the case of Bethel School District v. Fraser or Tinker vs. Des Moines. If we apply the Fraser test to Jason’s speech his speech would have not been protected. According to Fraser schools may prohibit speech that “materially and substantially interferes with the educational process is prohibited, including the use of obscene, profane language or gestures." Fraser majority at page 2. Jason did in fact use offensive speech when talking about the other students in his post, the names he called them and the profanity in the speech would reasonably be seen as offensive and vulgar. Though if applying this case to the Fraser test Jason’s speech would not be protected, in this case I decided to apply his speech to the test set forth in Tinker v. Des Moines.

If we apply the existing Supreme Court Precedent set forth in the case of Tinker vs. Des Moines, Jason’s speech would not be protected under the First Amendment. As stated in Tinker vs. Des Moines “schools may prohibit speech that may reasonably lead school authorities to forecast substantial disruption of or material interference with school activities or that collides with the rights of other students to be secure and be left alone” Tinker at page 513. Jason was on campus when he wrote the facebook post which violated the Student Code of Conduct Section 10 which prohibited students from ma...

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...o do something illegal. I do not believe his speech produced imminent action because nowhere in his speech did he include a date or say when he wanted them to bring the guns to school. If Jason’s speech were to include a date or something stating that he wanted them to do this action now or tomorrow then his speech would be producing imminent action. I do believe his speech was likely to produce such illegal action because some students could have taken his post seriously and brought a gun to school especially if they felt the same way about guns like Jason did. After looking at the facts of Jason speech and applying them to the Brandenburg test we can see that Jason’s speech only met two of the parts set forth in Brandenburg. Therefore Jason’s speech is protected by the First Amendment and the First Circuit court violated his rights. So I reverse the conviction.