A Legal Analysis of Students' First Amendment Rights in K-12 Public Education as it Relates to Internet Speech

1 online resource (123 pages) : PDF

2019

University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Adolescents are rarely without a cellphone and typically have unfettered access to social media sites where they post their status or comment on their friends’ posts. When said communication is used to bully or threaten others, it brings on challenges for schools. School administrators routinely ask the question: When the Internet is used in harmful ways by students, how should the school respond? This study was a legal analysis of students’ First Amendment rights in K-12 schools. State and federal appellate court considered and analyzed caselaw to determine the prevailing legal status of students’ rights when students utilized Internet speech as a tool for bullying another student. This study also considered to what extent the courts applied the Tinker test in the cases involving Internet speech. The conclusions from this study provide school administrators with context as to when they have regulatory power when discipline involves to Internet speech.

doctoral dissertations

Educational leadership

D.Ed.

First Amendment
Internet Speech
Public Education
School Law
Social Media

Educational Leadership

Dunaway, David

Benson, Tracey
Shore, Rebecca
Wayland, Coral

Thesis (D.Ed.)--University of North Carolina at Charlotte, 2019.

This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s). For additional information, see http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/.

Copyright is held by the author unless otherwise indicated.

Erdie_uncc_0694D_12267

http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.13093/etd:2637