Legal settlement is reached over student’s Facebook comments about teacher

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — A former Florida
high school student scored what her attorneys call a victory for the
First Amendment last week with the end of her two-year legal battle
over her Facebook comments about a teacher.

Katherine “Katie” Evans’ three-day suspension from Pembroke Pines Charter High School
for the comments will be wiped from her school record as part of a
settlement agreement reached in her federal lawsuit against her high
school principal. In addition, she will receive $15,000 in legal fees and $1 in nominal damages, her attorneys said.

Evans was suspended in November 2007 after her principal, Peter Bayer,
learned she had created a Facebook group describing her Advanced
Placement English teacher as “the worst teacher I’ve ever met.” Bayer
deemed the honor student’s actions as “cyberbullying/harassment (of) a
staff member” and placed her in a less rigorous English class,
according to Evans’ federal lawsuit.

With the legal support of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida,
Evans sued Bayer in late 2008, arguing her First Amendment right to
free speech had been violated with the school’s sanctions. The lawsuit
became one of a growing number of cases across the nation raising
questions of where a school’s authority begins and ends when it comes
to students’ speech on the Internet.

In a pretrial ruling, U.S. Magistrate Judge Barry Garber determined in February that Evans’ speech was constitutionally
protected, finding it was off-campus speech that did not cause any
disruptions at school and was not lewd, vulgar, threatening or
advocating illegal or dangerous behavior.

Evans, now a 20-year-old University of Florida student, had been ready to go to trial until the settlement was reached, said Matthew Bavaro, one of her attorneys.

“I think Katie is very happy her First Amendment
rights were vindicated and the school did the right thing,” Bavaro
said. He observed that she had never sought money other than the
nominal damages she received.

In addition to expunging the suspension from her record, the school must destroy any documents related to it, Bavaro said.

Bayer’s attorney did not return a phone call and e-mail on Monday. Pembroke Pines City Manager Charlie Dodge, whose city oversees the school, also did not return a phone call.

Evans had the Facebook group up for just two days,
taking it down after three of her peers criticized her and came to the
teacher’s defense.

David L. Hudson Jr., a scholar at the First Amendment Center in Nashville, Tenn.,
said that with the rising popularity of social media sites such as
Facebook, there’s been a corresponding increase in cases like the one
involving Evans.

Garber’s ruling in the case has some value as far as
setting precedent, he said. However, much of the education law
community is now awaiting how the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia rules on a pair of student speech cases out of Pennsylvania, he said.

In those cases, high school students in separate
districts were suspended for creating MySpace profiles of their
principals from their home computers.

Erika Anderson, a San Diego-based
attorney who works with school districts, said she anticipates that
however the federal appellate court rules, it will be challenged up to
the U.S. Supreme Court.

“The incidents of students who are doing this are on
the rise and school districts are at a loss to respond,” Anderson said.
“We are walking on eggshells with it because we don’t want to infringe
on anyone’s rights.”

———

(c) 2010, Sun Sentinel.

Visit the Sun-Sentinel on the World Wide Web at http://www.SunSentinel.com

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.