Files
Abstract
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.