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Dec. 8, 2024 |  By: Annelise Hanshaw - Missouri Independent

Missouri student asserts district discipline violates free speech rights

a classroom

By Annelise Hanshaw - Missouri Independent

A case filed in Cape Girardeau County could have implications for students’ rights to due process and free speech.

The case involves a 12-year-old girl identified only by her initials, A.N., who is serving a 180-day suspension from Jackson Junior High School. According to her petition in Cape Girardeau County Circuit Court, the punishment stems from a miscommunication.

“This is a big deal,” A.N.’s attorney, David Roland of the Freedom Center of Missouri, told The Independent. “Over the last couple of years, there has been a spike in the number of school discipline cases that are roughly similar to this.”

According to court filings, A.N. is a bright student with no prior disciplinary issues on her school record. In September, as threats of school shootings circulated nationwide and an incident in her neighborhood caused alarm, she became worried.

A.N. saw public posts on the social media platform SnapChat with threats of potential violence at her school. A boy from an outside school district, who is identified by his initials of S.C., was collecting the threatening messages and sharing them in an informative fashion.

A.N. reached out to the boy after seeing a threat, wondering if she should be worried. He asked her for the details, and she typed out what she had seen in a private message because she did not take a screenshot of the concerning post.

Her message, which was a picture of her ceiling with the threat typed over it, didn’t include a disclaimer that it was second-hand information. S.C. knew that from the context, according to court documents.

He shared the message widely, and the Jackson R-II School District was alerted and closed schools for one day.

A.N. talked to police, and detectives unraveled the miscommunication.

“The detective quickly came to the conclusion that A.N. had not intended to cause any harm, panic, or disruption by sending the Snap, that there was no evidence suggesting that the Snap constituted a threat to any person or place, including the district, and that A.N. had neither the means nor the capability to act on any alleged ‘threat,’” Roland wrote in the court filing.

Later, A.N.’s principal and superintendent became aware that her message lacked any intent to harm but suspended her, first with an initial 10-day suspension and then expanding it to 180 days.

A.N. returned to school between the 10-day suspension and notification of the extended sentence and attended classes for one and a half days.

School policies allow for suspension up to 180 days for false alarms or reports, which the district handbook described as “intentionally tampering with alarm equipment for the purpose of setting off an alarm or making false reports for the purpose of scaring or disrupting the school environment.”

A.N. was barred from school grounds, even while she had an appeal pending before the school board, which Roland argues is a due-process issue.

“There was clearly no intent to frighten or anything. It’s basically a big misunderstanding,” Roland said. “The school understood that, and it punished her anyway. That was the big difference maker here.”

Missouri courts have often sided with school officials and upheld discipline imposed for speech outside school grounds, Roland said. A.N.’s case is a more “extreme example,” and he predicts there is a good chance to succeed where others have failed.

“We felt like this was a really good case to take on to try and establish that there have to be limits to the jurisdiction of the school,” Roland said. “Students do not give up their rights just because they’re enrolled in a public school.”

Spokesperson for the Jackson R-II School district Merideth Pobst said the district “cannot comment on pending litigation or on confidential student disciplinary matters.” 

“The District’s first priority is to ensure student safety and to take appropriate action when we receive notice of safety-related concerns,” she added.

Daniel Rhoads, a St. Louis-based attorney who often tackles student rights litigation, said Missouri courts often take the school’s side in issues of student speech.

Tinker v. Des Moines, a U.S. Supreme Court Case decided in 1969, established that students have the right to free speech, even within schools. The case established a test that schools can only censor students when the speech causes a “substantial disruption.”

Missouri courts, Rhoads said, “will look at all things out of the ordinary and call those all disruptions that are substantial enough to justify punishing the student for their speech.”

Rhoads represented a student who had received a 180-day suspension after creating a meme that pictured a peer lying in a coffin.

The peer received joking comments at school and got into an altercation in the classroom in frustration. A judge out of Missouri’s Eastern Division U.S. District Court ruled this was enough of a disruption, although the meme was spread out of school.

Rhoads said many student free speech cases are handled at the district level and never make it to court, but he sees a need for students to challenge unconstitutional rules statewide.

“A lot of rules around speech and student handbooks are, frankly, unconstitutional and need to be challenged,” he said. “I’ve seen facially unconstitutional rules about speech in student handbooks, and unless you get a case where a student is  punished under that rule and the family is able and willing to appeal it all the way to court, you’re not going to get the courts to strike those rules down.”

Without more challenges like A.N.’s, he said, “students’ rights are just going to be trampled on indefinitely.”