Court Said American Schools Have No Powers over Internet

[Yugioh21]

One of the American schools was very surprised to find out that it didn’t actually have the power of God over its students’ use of the worldwide web. It seems that Minnewaska Area Schools believed that human rights and the constitution didn’t apply to its staff when they were trying to force one of the students to hand over her social media passwords so they could snoop through her online life.

Fortunately, a US judge has reminded the school of their status in society and clarified that forcing a person to give up their social media passwords violates the First Amendment. Now the school has to pay $70,000 in damages and to rewrite its policies to prevent such cases in future.

Nevertheless, it seems that American schools really don’t understand this world when it comes to thinking that they have the power over their students. For example, a Rogers High School senior, a 17-year-old student and football captain, was recently suspended for as long as 7 weeks for just two words posted online.

Free speech advocates point out that the Minnewaska case also really hasn’t been resolved as the school still doesn’t understand that it has done something wrong. The Superintendent, who was not in that position when the snooping occurred, but worked on the settlement, said that the school wanted to make children aware that their actions outside school “can be detrimental”. The good thing is that the court didn’t think so. Maybe schools have to get a bit of the constitution for home reading?