In Wynar v. Douglas County School Dist., published August 29, 2013, the Ninth Circuit affirmed summary judgment granted to a defendant school district that suspended a student for sending friends instant messages on MySpace bragging about the student's gun collection and ammunition, discussing shooting specific students at school, setting a specific date for the shooting and the types of students he would shoot, and comparing the proposed rampage to the Virginia Tech shootings. His friends, alarmed, reported him to school authorities. The student claimed the instant messages were a joke. The school initially suspended him for 10 days. After giving him written notice and a hearing where he was permitted to call and cross-examine witnesses, it suspended him for 90 days. The student sued the school district, administrators, and officials under 42 U.S.C. section 1983.
After reviewing various circuits' analysis of whether school districts could constitutionally discipline students for off-campus speech, the Ninth Circuit determined that when faced with an identifiable threat of school violence, schools may take disciplinary action in response to off-campus speech that meets the requirements of the U.S. Supreme Court's Tinker v. Des Moines Indep. Cmty. Sch. Dist. decision. Under Tinker, schools may prohibit speech that might reasonably lead school authorities to forecast substantial disruption of or material interference with school activities, or that collides with other students' rights to be secure and to be left alone. The messages here met those standards, whether or not they were protected by the 1st Amendment. Further, the procedural due process the school provided the student satisfied Constitutional requirements. Although the student complained that the initial 10-day suspension did not satisfy all of the school district's procedural requirements for such suspensions, those requirements did not state constitutional minimums for procedure.
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