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Lawsuit Over Two-Word Tweet Moves Forward

Posted by Soulskill on from the culmination-of-our-civilization dept.

An anonymous reader writes: A defamation suit filed by a former Minnesota high school student has gotten approval from a federal judge to proceed. The suit was filed in response to a suspension issued by the school after Reid Sagehorn published a two-word comment on Twitter. In 2014, there existed a Twitter ostensibly about confessions from students at Sagehorn's high school. That account asked if Sagehorn had made out with a particular female teacher, and Sagehorn jokingly replied, "Actually yes." Not long after, he was suspended for five days, and that suspension was later extended to the rest of the month. The school administration convinced his parents to withdraw him from the school and send him to a different one. The town's police chief even spoke about it to the media, saying the comment was likely a felony. Sagehorn filed the lawsuit seeking damages and an expungement of the disciplinary actions.

3 of 220 comments (clear)

  1. Headline is stupid by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Focusing on the idea that this lawsuit is about a "two word tweet" is ridiculous and dishonest. This lawsuit is about accusations of impropriety by a teacher (and whether it's okay to blithely accuse a teacher of something even if you think you're joking). The "two word tweet" focus is attempting to draw ridicule to the case before making the facts clear, which is somewhere between intensely stupid and intentionally misleading.

    Also, the meaning of the word "actually" in this context is the same as "literally", meaning that the tweet was not a joke no matter what the kid tweeting intended. Of course, people almost never spend half a second's thought on the things they tweet, so I guess it's not surprising.

    1. Re:Headline is stupid by zieroh · · Score: 5, Informative

      No, actually you're dead wrong. The lawsuit is about the suspension that resulted from the two-word tweet. It wasn't filed by the teacher, it wasn't filed by the school. It was filed by the student.

      Furthermore, the police chief's statement that this amounted to a felony is pure BS. At worst, it would be defamation, but that's not what this lawsuit is about.

      --
      People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
  2. Re:Police chief should be fired by Ultra64 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Are you retarded?

    He never said anything about what he thought should be legal or illegal.

    He simply stated the law as it currently is.