Jonathan Perez-Patino
“Supreme Court rules for Pennsylvania cheerleaderin school free speech case” fromCNBC (June 2021)
COLLAPSE
In May of 2017, a student named Brandi Levy froma Pennsylvania public school tried out for herschool’s varsity cheerleader squad. When she failedto make the varsity team and was insteadplaced on the junior varsity team, she made posteda picture captioned “F*** school f*** softballf*** cheer f*** everything,” on her Snapchat story.Eventually, this picture was seen by thecheerleader coaches and the school principal and shewas punished by being suspended from thecheerleading program for the rest of the year. Withthe help of her family, she challenged thispunishment in court and her case made it all the wayto the Supreme Court. The Supreme Courtended up ruling 8-1 in Levy’s favor, claiming thatthe school was violating Levy’s civil liberty offreespeech by punishing her for voicing her opinion whilebeing off-campus.The civil liberty being violated by her schoolwas freedom of speech. A public school is considereda government entity because they are funded by thefederal government and therefore, as a resultof the first amendment, the government can not takeaway a person’s freedom of speech. However,the school was acting against this civil liberty whenpunishing Brandi Levy for openly expressing hernegative opinion towards the coach’s decision of placingher on the junior varsity squad.
Gracie Smith”Are Governments Violating Human Rights and CivilLiberties in Coronavirus Response?
