In 2021, the Supreme Court ruled on a case,Mahanoy School District v. B.L.,which received quite a bit of media attention. A quick Google search will provide you with everything you'd want to know about it.
For this extra credit assignment, I'm asking you to write about 2 double-spaced pages answering the following questions ...
1. Do you agree with the Supreme Court's ruling in the aforementioned case? Why or why not?
2. In which circumstances (if any) should public schools be able to punish students for what they post on social media?
a) Does it matter where the student was (i.e., on or off school grounds) when he/she made the controversial post? Why or why not?
b) Does it matter how old a student is? So, for example, do you feel differently if we're talking about a college student compared to a middle school student? Why or why not?
3. Should different forms of student speech (whether they occur on or off school grounds) be treated the same when it comes to First Amendment protections? For example, is expressing a thought verbally, silently (e.g., taking a knee to protest), or on social media the same? Why or why not?
4. How (if at all) do you think the Tinker test applies to student speech that takes place off school grounds? Could speech that originated off of school grounds later lead to substantial disruption on school grounds? If yes, how should this be handled?
There are no formatting requirements although please write a cohesive paper rather than answering these questions one-by-one.
Finally, please aim to have most/all of your paper focus on sharing your thoughts on the above questions rather than spending time simply restating the specifics of the case.