Layshock v. Hermitage School District
United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit
650 F.3d 205 (2011)
Justin Layshock (plaintiff) created a crude, mocking fake online profile of his principal Eric Trosch from home on a personal computer, granting classmates access; he later accessed the profile while at school and showed it to classmates, and although school IT staff attempted to restrict access, the site was not immediately blocked, with the school instead relying on supervised computer-access settings. Layshock received a 10-day suspension, a semester in an alternative-education program, an extracurricular ban, and exclusion from his own graduation ceremony; he sued the Hermitage School District (defendant) for violating his First Amendment rights, and the trial court found the district could not establish the speech caused a substantial disruption to the school environment, prompting the district's appeal.
Whether the First Amendment prevents a school from disciplining a student for off-campus conduct that creates a foreseeable risk of substantial disruption within the school.