Student tossed off team for online remarks wins partial settlement
By The Associated Press
11.19.02
PITTSBURGH — A school district is to pay $60,000 to partially settle a lawsuit brought by a former student who said his free-speech rights were violated when he was thrown off the volleyball team after posting an Internet message critical of a teacher.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which filed suit against Keystone Oaks School District outside Pittsburgh on behalf of former student Jack Flaherty, announced the settlement yesterday. The ACLU said the district agreed to pay damages and attorney fees.
A lawyer for the district, Douglas Nolin, said the settlement was "an economic decision" based on how much it would cost to continue the case.
He said the school board approved the settlement last month and that it was to be paid by the district's insurance carrier.
When he was a senior early last year, Flaherty was taken off the district's high school volleyball team as punishment for Internet messages he posted — one was critical of a teacher at the school who was also the mother of a player for a rival volleyball team.
The message, according to the ACLU, said the opposing player's mother was a "bad art teacher."
After learning of the messages, the school removed Flaherty from the team, prohibited him from attending after-school events and forbade him from using school computers for any purpose.
The ACLU's Pittsburgh chapter filed suit saying Flaherty shouldn't have been punished because he filed the message — which was on an Internet bulletin board devoted to high school volleyball — from home.
"Although the courts have given school officials broad authority to regulate and punish students' expression while they are in school, teachers and administrators need to recognize that the First Amendment limits their authority to play parent when the students are home," said Kim Watterson, a lawyer who handled the case for the ACLU.
Flaherty, who now is a sophomore at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, said in a statement released by the ACLU that he hopes "in the future Keystone Oaks will not punish students who exercise their constitutional rights to criticize the school."
After the lawsuit was filed, a federal judge ordered the school to reinstate Flaherty's privileges and allow him to rejoin the team. School officials then canceled the remainder of the volleyball schedule after the team's coaches and several players quit.
U.S. District Judge Donetta Ambrose refused the ACLU's request to find the district in contempt for canceling the season.
The settlement is only partial.
The case is to continue regarding language contained in certain school policies, including those on Internet use, discipline and the student handbook, said Nolin, the school district attorney.
Nolin said he did not wish to discuss the language in question because the ACLU was expected to file court documents this week explaining the group's objections to parts of the policies.
The ACLU's position is that the language in the policies in question allows for students to be punished for certain types of speech that are protected under the First Amendment, Watterson said.