Kowalski v. Berkeley County Schools: A School Can Discipline a Student for Creating a “Students Against Sluts Herpes” Website Without Violating the First Amendment

Facts of the Kowalski Case

In December 2005, Kara Kowalski, a senior at Musselman High School, created a discussion group webpage on MySpace.com with the heading “S.A.S.H.,” which she said was an acronym for “Students Against Sluts Herpes.”  Under her webpage’s title, she posted this statement: “No No Herpes, We don’t want no herpes” (p. 3). According to the court, Shay N., another Musselman student, was the main subject of discussion on Kowalski’s webpage.

Kowalski invited approximately 100 people on her MySpace “friends” list to join the S.A.S.H. discussion group, and about two dozen Musselman High School students responded. In particular, Ray Parsons, a Musselman High School student, joined the S.A.S.H. discussion group from a school computer. He posted a photograph of himself and a friend holding their noses while exhibiting a sign that read, “Shay Has Herpes,” referring to Shay N. (p. 4). He also uploaded two edited photographs of Shay to the S.A.S.H. webpage. On one of the photos, Parsons drew red dots on Shay’s face to simulate herpes. He also added a sign near Shay’s pelvic region that read, “Warning: Enter at your own risk” (p. 4). Parsons captioned a second photo of Shay with a sign that read, “portrait of a whore” (p. 4). Other students posted comments approving of these photos.

Shay’s parents filed a harassment complaint about the webpage at Musselman High School, and Shay missed a day of school because she did not want to be exposed to the students who had harassed her on the webpage. Principal Ronald Stephens conducted an investigation. Kowalski admitted creating the “S.A.S.H.” webpage discussion group but she denied that she had posted any photographs or disparaging remarks.

Concluding that Kowalski’s webpage activity had violated the school’s Student Code of Conduct, which prohibited students from bullying or harassing other students, school officials suspended Kowalski from school for ten days (later reduced to five days) and prohibited her from participating in any school events in which she was not a direct participant for a period of 90 days. The school also banned Kowalski from the cheerleading squad for the remainder of the school year and prohibited her from crowning the next “Queen of Charm” in the school’s Charm Review.

Kowalski sues, and the Fourth Circuit Sides with the School District

Kowalski sued, claiming school authorities violated her right to free speech under the First Amendment. Essentially, she argued that school officials had no authority to discipline her for expression that took place outside of school.  

The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Kowalski’s arguments and upheld the trial court’s decision to dismiss her case. In the Fourth Circuit’s view, schools “have a compelling interest in regulating student speech that interferes with or disrupts the work and discipline of the school, including discipline for student harassment and bullying” (p. 17, internal quotation marks omitted). Student-on-student bullying is a major concern in schools across the country, the court pointed out, “and can cause victims to become depressed and anxious, to be afraid to go to school, and to have thoughts of suicide” (p. 17). Consequently, the court concluded, “school administrators must be able to prevent and punish harassment and bullying in order to provide a safe school environment conducive to learning” (p. 18).

In the court’s opinion, Kara Kowalski’s speech disrupted the work of the school and was not entitled to First Amendment protection. Indeed, the court pointed out, Kowalski’s role in the S.A.S.H. webpage incident “was particularly mean-spirited and hateful” (p. 29). Kowalski’s web page “called on classmates, in a pack, to target Shay N., knowing that it would be hurtful and damaging to her ability to sit with other students in class at Musselman High School and have a suitable learning experience” (p. 29). In the Fourth Circuit’s view, the webpage’s disparaging remarks were “indisputably harassing and bullying, in violation of Musselman High School’s regulations prohibiting such conduct” (p. 30).

Conclusion: Online Bullying and Harassment Often Disrupts the Learning Environment

The Fourth Circuit’s Kowalski opinion is a good decision for both school authorities and students. Within the Fourth Circuit’s jurisdiction, a student who is the victim of online harassment can appeal to school authorities for help, and school authorities can discipline an online bully without fear of violating the First Amendment.

The court recognized that bullying and harassment that takes place off the school campus can disrupt the work of the school and interfere with the victim’s ability to learn. Indeed, bullying and harassment that takes place on a social networking web site is especially harmful because it can be dispersed more widely and more quickly than face-to-face taunting.

Unfortunately, not all federal courts see online bullying in the same way. Last year, a federal judge in California ruled that the Beverly Hills School District could not discipline a student who posted a video on YouTube that recorded her friends describing a thirteen-year-old classmate as a “slut” and a “piece of shit” (J.C. v. Beverly Hills Unified School District, 2010, p. 1098). Although the judge acknowledged that the victim of this mean-spirited video became “hysterical,” (p. 1122), he found no evidence that the YouTube posting had disrupted the work of the school in any substantial way. Therefore, the student had a constitutional right to post her YouTube video.

The facts in the Beverly Hills case and the Kowalski case are very similar. In both cases, a school disciplined a student for creating an electronic medium that other students used to describe a classmate as a slut. Why were the outcomes different?

In essence, the Beverly Hills court and the Kowalski court interpreted the Supreme Court’s decision in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (1969) differently. Tinker, we recall, upholds a student’s First Amendment right to free speech while at school unless school authorities reasonably conclude that the speech disrupts the school environment or interferes with the rights of other students.

The federal judge in California declared that a student’s YouTube video did not create a significant disruption at school, and thus school officials had no constitutional authority to punish the student who posted the video. In contrast, the Fourth Circuit’s Kowalski decision concluded that Kowalski’s “Students Against Sluts Herpes” webpage was an act of bullying and harassment that disrupted her school’s learning environment simply by interfering with the victim’s ability to learn.

Kowalski v. Berkeley County School District is an extremely important decision, because it recognizes that online bullying and harassment can disrupt a school’s learning environment even when it occurs off the school grounds. If other federal courts follow the Fourth Circuit’s lead, school authorities all over the United States will have the authority to discipline students who bully their classmates online, and student cyberbullies will not be able to avoid punishment for hateful attacks on their classmates by hiding behind the First Amendment.

References

Kowalski v. Berkeley County Schools, No. 10-1098, 2011 U.S. App. LEXIS 15419 (4th Cir. July 27, 2001).  

J.C. v. Beverly Hills Unified School District, 711 F. Supp. 2d 1094 (C.D. Cal. 2010).

Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, 393 U.S. 503 (1969).