Law Commons^™

Tinker Gone Viral: Diverging Threshold Tests For Analyzing School Regulation Of Off-Campus Digital Student Speech, Daniel Marcus-Toll

Fordham Law Review

In the context of students’ free speech rights, courts have traditionally premised school regulatory authority on geography, deferring to school officials on campus and limiting a school’s capacity to discipline students for conduct taking place beyond school hours or property. In the contemporary setting, however, where wireless devices, mobile phones, and other communicative technologies abound, a student may affect the school environment significantly without setting foot on school property. In the absence of guidance from the U.S. Supreme Court, the limits of school authority to regulate such “off-campus” student speech are uncertain.

Several courts have permitted school discipline in response …