In an attempt to get her daughter, who was removed from a school sports team for broadcasting an underage drinking binge on Snapchat, put back on the school sports team, a mother sued that the school was violating the kid's right to free speech.
The judge said no.
A 13-year-old's drinking binge on Snapchat video is not protected by the First Amendment, a judge ruled in declining to order the girl's school to allow her back on the volleyball team.
The eighth-grader's mother had filed a motion seeking an injunction against the 45-day suspension that was imposed by the North Platte School District in Dearborn, Missouri, a small town north of Kansas City. She had contended her daughter's case was analogous to that of a Pennsylvania teen who recently won a closely watched U.S. Supreme Court case after she was kicked off her school's cheerleading squad because of a foul-mouthed Snapchat post.
The Missouri judge's decision, issued last week in U.S. District Court, rejected the mother's argument, saying that the school district was punishing the girl's actions — underage drinking — rather than her speech or her mother's subsequent statements on Snapchat, a messaging app on which posts disappear after a short time.
