School District Sued By ACLU Over Student's Free Speech Rights

An anonymous reader writes "The ACLU is suing Minnewaska Area Schools and Pope County, according to this article in the StarTribune. At issue: school administrators and a sheriff's deputy forced a girl to hand over login information to her Facebook and email accounts, after she posted on Facebook that she 'hated' a school hall monitor who had been 'mean' to her, and cursed in a separate Facebook comment because someone reported her. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages and an order that would restrain school officials from attempts to regulate or discipline students based on speech made outside of school hours and off school property."

Comments

What about the parents?

[Lord Juan]

I mean, what in the world are the school administrators thinking? That parents are not going to care if they force their daughter to give them their log in information to their personal accounts?

Re:What about the parents?

[stephanruby]

Free speech aside, don't you USAns have a constitutional right to not incriminate yourself ?

Yes, that twelve year old girl folded like a little girl. She's a wimp. That's mostly the parents fault of not training her properly. When I have kids, they'll be able to survive police intimidation and interrogation techniques by the time they're three years old. In fact, the first word they'll learn won't be "Mama" or "Papa", it will be "IwantMyLawyerImNotTalkingToYouPigs".

Re:What about the parents?

[gl4ss]

dunno.. call the deputy? that's what they did anyways? and the deputy promptly went and gave access to the school "officials" to those accounts.

the deputy should be fired and the school staff too. they fucked up.

Re:What about the parents?

[maitai]

As a native (Yurok), wtf are you talking about?

Re:What about the parents?

[Scarletdown]

They're idiots. In a national context the term is American for people that have citizenship in the US. Despite what bigots from other parts of the super continent might think, there's rarely if ever a legitimate reason for using American in a different context.

Considering Mexicans are citizens of Los Estados Unidos de Mexico (aka United States of Mexico), and Canadians are citizens of a place called Canada (formerly the Dominion of Canada, it stands to reason that citizens of the United States of America would be referred to as Americans.

Re:What about the parents?

[firex726]

Yea, they are so worried over a kid hurting themselves that they take away the monkey bars, or sand pit; but see no issues with forcing them to hand over login creds, or activating webcams in supplied laptops.

Re:What about the parents?

[netsavior]

You joke, but I was expelled in 9th grade for something vaguely similar (admitting I had done something off campus that was neither illegal, nor against student code of conduct). My kids (age 7 and 5) have explicit instructions from me. If the principal, teacher, or a policeman want you to say something that you do not want to say or do something you do not want to do (other than normal school work) then you need to say:

"I don't want to do that unless you call my parents"

will it result in false positives? Maybe. Will I honor that phone call? ABSOLUTELY.

Kids don't actually have many rights, especially during school hours. They are not protected by our laws because they can't vote. The only ones that can protect them from abuse of power is their parents, so whereas you are entitled to trial, counsel, not incriminating yourself, children are only really entitled to not being denied access to their parents. It is my job to extend my civil rights to my children in this situation, because they have none. So the earlier I am involved in an incident, the better.

Re:What about the parents?

[g0bshiTe]

Of course not, it programs the child to think that it is ok to give up freedoms if authorities say so.

Re:What about the parents?

[gv250]

To foreigners, a Yankee is an American.
To Americans, a Yankee is a Northerner.
To Northerners, a Yankee is from the East.
To Easterners, a Yankee is from New England.
To New Englanders, a Yankee is from Vermont.
And in Vermont, a Yankee is somebody who eats pie for breakfast

Re:What about the parents?

[Ihmhi]

I had something similar happen to me in... 6th or 7th grade? Might have been 8th. (So we're talking late 90s, early 00s.)

I was doing arts and crafts at some... library thing. Might have been boy scouts. The point is, it was also an out of school function. We were making our own bookmarks and then laminating them. I made one that said something like "Some people are nice..." on one side and "...and I'm not one of them!" on the back. Just something silly and teenage-y.

I go to school the next day, and I find out that I had left my stupid little bookmark there. The person running the class (who also happened to be my school's art teacher) showed it to my teacher, and my teacher talked to me and stated how it was inappropriate. I replied with it was none of her business at it had taken place outside of school. I suppose she was power tripping or one of those "think of the children" people, but she was really fishing for me to apologize or admit guilt or something. She threatened to escalate it to the principal. I said "Go ahead," sat down, and went back to my schoolwork.

Still have that bookmark somewhere...

Long story short, make sure you teach your kids how to deal with authority figures who are asshats. Teach them to say no to the authority when they make an unreasonable request. Teach them to stand up for themselves like my parents did.

Re:What about the parents?

[demachina]

Just because a school board/administrator writes it in to their policies doesn't make it legal or right. Those policies grossly exceed their jurisdiction when the activities occur outside school hours, on a students personal computer, and not on school property. The student is only subject to local, state and Federal law at that point not the whims of the school board.

People with some power often seek to acquire more power, and it regretably often falls on the shoulders of the people whose rights are being trampled to try to stop them.

For example the U.S. President and Attorney General have recently bestowed upon themselves the power to assasinate American citizens without any judicial oversight. Just because they say they can doesn't change the fact that they are probably violating the Constitution and their oath of office to uphold the Constitution. The burden has now shifted on entities like the ACLU to engage in a multi year battle in the courts to try to prove them wrong.

In a similar vein the Bush administration gave themselve the power to torture people which is also a violation of Federal laws and international treaties.

A problem may arise when the politicians who are breaking the laws manage to stack the judicial process, especially the Supreme court, so the courts also fail to do the right thing, and let them get away with it.

Another problem arises when you have a two party system and both parties have become equally complicit in dismantling the rule of law and trampling civil liberties.

When those two things happen all the checks and balances the founding fathers built in to the Constitution are gone, and you are on the road to a totalitarian state unless the actual people up and say NO. That is a hard thing though, most people are too afraid.

Freest country in the world

[gnasher719]

Whenever I hear Americans make that claim, I don't know whether to laugh or to cry.

I had school teachers who thought it was their job to teach the kids how to stand up for themselves and how to stand up to authority. Including theirs.

Re:Freest country in the world

[sosume]

In this regard (free speech being regulated by schools, universities, employers, etc) the US is starting to look a lot like former Eastern Germany. I mean, like in this movie http://imdb.to/2fC1aE I find it really hard to understand how the US justifies this spying on each other's thoughts.

Re:Freest country in the world

[Rogerborg]

It's a State that indoctrinates children to swear allegiance to it. That's really all that you need to know.

Re:Freest country in the world

[arth1]

Exactly. The US is not free because no one tries to curtail our freedoms. The US is free because when people try to curtail our freedoms we have strong recourse.

You actually believe this?

A strong recourse would be the school admin losing his job and the cop going to jail. Please post back to let us know when this happens.

Re:Freest country in the world

[Hatta]

We have no recourse. If there were recourse in the US we'd have never have gone to Iraq, our jails would be stuffed with bankers, and we'd all be buying pot OTC. What we have instead is tyranny.

What are the adults' priorities?

[bughunter]

This is disturbing not necessarily because of the password coercion, but because of the entire premise. What are the school administrators, the parents, and the entire adult community *thinking* when they make such a big friggin deal about "I hate you" comments that are clearly just juvenile emoting? Why are they getting involved in such petty hall locker politics to begin with?

Did they never mature past a high school emotional age?

Were they itching to make an example of someone?

Do they have some policy or quota that they need to demonstrate compliance with?

In other words, it's just like when my wife flips out after I leave dirty socks on the floor. The socks aren't the real problem; something else is. She's been bottling it up, and the socks were just the trigger for some other pent up stress... it may or may not be something I did, but it certainly means there's something I need to fix. In the same sense, something else is going on in Minnewaska... something else that needs fixing. And it's not middle school drama.

Re:What are the adults' priorities?

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Years and years of political pressure for "zero tolerance," a.k.a. "zero intelligence." The idea that most of the things kids get up to are individual incidents and should be dealt with on a case-by-case basis is anathema to this mentality. But it sells well to parents (until their kids get caught up in it, anyway), to legislators, and to voters in school board elections.

Re:ACLU

[madhi19]

It the sheriff's deputy action that I found weird and mostly inexcusable of all peoples the cop should have been the voice of reason and told the Principal that he was treading in murky water to say the least.

Damned if they do damned if they don't

[VinylRecords]

Welcome to the New American Nanny State.

Right now, schools are under heavy pressure to reduce "bullying". The politicians and money groups have seized on an issue that is easy to win over the hearts of American voters and donors. That's why "bullying" is such a hot issue right now and gets tons of media coverage.

Kids talking about sex, something mentioned in the article as being another reason why the police and school went after this student, is another always hot issue especially with American "conservatives". We must avoid talking to children or exposing them to sex at all costs.

So we have a school where a kid is accused of bullying, and also talking about sex, on Facebook. The school knows if it does nothing they'll get blasted by moms, and the media, about how they failed to protect other children from bullies and perverts. They let a student make hate speech and promote sex talk amongst pre-teens or whatever. But if the school acts then they'll get blasted by people who think that the schools should mind their own business and let the parents handle things. And we know how well parents handle things in modern America.

Instead of finding a middle ground, the school feels the pressure from all sides and.....calls the cops. Huge overreaction in hindsight of course but they must have felt at the time that it was warranted.

But seriously? A kid can't say that they hate their teacher anymore? A kid can't talk about sex with another kid? When I was in school it didn't matter if a kid said he hated a hall monitor or a teacher. Most of the teachers had been around long enough to recognize which kids disliked them. And most of my teachers could tell which boys and girls had started puberty earlier than others because we behaved much differently around the opposite sex. Times have changed.

The school should have just called the student's mother or father and said "some kid tattled on your kid, it's not a big deal, but you should monitor your kid's facebook and just check to see if they are doing anything that is inappropriate". No cops. No teachers. No detention even. Let the parents do their jobs.

Re:ACLU

[mosb1000]

I take it you don't have much experience talking to the police?

Not to mention the state prosecutor

[The Creator]

Accessing computer systems with stolen passwords is a crime.

Re:ACLU

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Sometimes the ACLU's actions make me roll my eyes, but on this one, they're right.

Why is it that so many posts praising the ACLU in any way contain this kind of ritual disclaimer? Can you give actual examples of some of the eye-roll-inspiring things the ACLU has done, or is it just "I've heard they're a liberal organization, and liberals are icky"?

Re:ACLU

[Fjandr]

In a perfect world, I'd agree with you. In the real world, it's fairly rare for an on-duty cop to be anything resembling "the voice of reason" when it comes to someone showing the slightest defiance to an authority figure. Whether that defiance is warranted or not is usually not ever something that would even cross the mind of most cops I've met.

Re:Incredible

[Sique]

They didn't just exceeded their powers. They were accessing a computer system with stolen or coerced passwords. This is a federal crime. They are just criminals.