Discipline for Facebook posts didn’t violate free speech, says Minn. high court

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BOSTON, Mass. — A state university didn’t violate the First Amendment when it disciplined a student in a professional program for posting disrespectful and threatening comments on her Facebook page, the Minnesota Supreme Court has ruled.

The decision affirms a ruling by a state appellate court.

The plaintiff was a student in the University of Minnesota’s mortuary program. While taking an anatomy laboratory, the plaintiff posted humorous comments on her Facebook page concerning a cadaver she had been assigned to dissect. She also posted a comment about wishing to “stab a certain someone in the throat” with an embalming instrument.

The university gave the plaintiff a failing grade in her anatomy course and imposed other sanctions as discipline for her Facebook postings. The school concluded that the comments were either disrespectful of corpses donated to the school or objectively threatening in violation of its student code of conduct.

Explaining that her comments were immature rather than truly threatening or disrespectful, the plaintiff argued that being disciplined for her off-campus conduct violated the First Amendment.

But the court concluded that there was no free speech violation because the school acted in accordance with narrowly tailored program rules related to established standards of professional conduct.

“Tying the legal rule to established professional conduct standards limits a university’s restrictions on Facebook use to students in professional programs and other disciplines where student conduct is governed by established professional conduct standards. And by requiring that the restrictions be narrowly tailored and directly related to established professional conduct standards, we limit the potential for a university to create overbroad restrictions that would impermissibly reach into a university student’s personal life outside of and unrelated to the program,” the court said.

Minnesota Supreme Court. Tatro v. University of Minnesota, No. A10-1440. June 20, 2012. Lawyers USA No. 993-3914.