P.O. Box 693 Mexico, Missouri www.mofreedom.org (314) 604-6621
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: CONTACT: Dave Roland
December 3, 2024 (314) 604-6621
Mexico, Missouri—Does the Constitution allow school officials to give a twelve-year-old a year-long suspension for telling another student about a potential school shooting threat she saw on social media? That is the question presented by a new case the Freedom Center of Missouri has filed on behalf of a family in Cape Girardeau County, Missouri.
Shortly after classes started this year the Jackson R-II School District notified parents that a number of posts hinting at possible school shootings had been swirling around social media. Twelve-year-old A.N., a student attending Jackson Junior High School, was already concerned about these threats, but one Thursday evening she saw a post on SnapChat that vaguely threatened violence against “the Jackson school.” She sent S.C., a student from another school district, a direct message telling him about what she had seen. S.C. asked for a screenshot of the post. Not having taken one, A.N. sent him a picture with a message that approximated the message she had seen. S.C. took a screenshot of the picture, then posted it publicly on SnapChat. The screenshot had A.N.’s name attached to it, making appear she was the source of the threat.
School officials saw the picture and, because they were unaware of the context that led A.N. to send the picture to S.C., the school district cancelled that Friday’s classes and extracurricular activities. Several hours later the police were able to review the conversation between A.N. and S.C., confirming that A.N. had just been making S.C. aware of what she had seen someone else post, and they notified the school district that A.N. had not been threatening anyone. Nevertheless, the school district demanded that A.N. appear at a meeting the following Monday to “explain herself.” Although school officials have acknowledged they had no reason to doubt A.N.’s explanation, the school principal still suspended her for ten days, claiming that she had either engaged in “disruptive speech” or had made “a false report.”
This penalty raises concerns under both the First Amendment and the Due Process Clause of the U.S. Constitution. In 2021 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a school district violated a student’s rights by punishing her for comments made on social media outside of the school setting.
“The suspension the school imposed on A.N. was unjustified under the school’s own express policies,” said Dave Roland, director of litigation for the Freedom Center of Missouri, which is representing the student in her lawsuit. “This communication did not fall within the school handbook’s definitions of ‘disruptive speech’ or ‘false reports.’ But even if A.N.’s expression of concern to another student somehow ran afoul of the school’s policies, the First Amendment does not allow schools to police student communications twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.”
Unfortunately, the ten-day suspension was not the end of the story. The school principal referred the situation to the school district superintendent, who added another one hundred seventy days to A.N.’s punishment—meaning she would be suspended for an entire school year. The superintendent justified his decision by pointing out that the district felt it had to cancel classes and school activities because it believed that A.N. had made a threat against the school. In 2023, however, the Supreme Court held that the First Amendment does not allow government officials to punish a speaker based solely on whether someone else believed the speaker had made a threat. For a punishment to satisfy the First Amendment, the government must prove that the speaker was aware that others would regard their statement as a threat, then deliberately accepted “a substantial risk of inflicting serious harm” by making the statement anyway.
“A.N. is twelve years old,” Roland emphasized. “She expressed concern about someone else’s social media post to one person who was perfectly aware that A.N. was not threatening anyone. She could not possibly have anticipated that S.C. would post the message publicly and without the appropriate context. The First Amendment applies with full force to these circumstances.”
The lawsuit the Freedom Center has filed on behalf of A.N. and her family addresses questions at the cutting edge of constitutional law. It seeks to reinforce that young people do not relinquish constitutional protections simply because they are enrolled in public schools, and that schools may not impose draconian punishments on a student due to the decisions school officials made before they had complete information about a student’s non-threatening communication.
Founded in November 2010, the Freedom Center of Missouri is a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to research, litigation, and education in defense of individual liberty and transparent, accountable, constitutionally limited government. The Freedom Center is one of Missouri’s leading legal advocates for free speech and due process of law; this is the Freedom Center’s twelfth case dealing with the freedom of expression. Additional information about the Freedom Center’s mission, cases, and activities can be found online at www.mofreedom.org.
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[NOTE: To arrange interviews on this subject, journalists may call Dave Roland at (314) 604-6621.]
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