The ACLU and Cyberbullying

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“Schools need to deal with cyberbullying,” said Witold J. [“Vic”] Walczak, head of the Pennsylvania ACLU. “What separates us [the ACLU and the school board] is how much power the school is given to address those problems. We feel like the school district’s approach is too big a power grab.”

Washington Post, A cheerleader’s Snapchat rant leads to ‘momentous’ Supreme Court case on student speech, April 25, 2021.

The state—including “schools”—does not “need to deal with cyberbullying.” The ACLU saying that they do is one of the most dangerous attacks on your right to free speech that you can imagine.

“Cyberbullying” is not a category of unprotected speech, and outside of categories of historically unprotected speech, speech is protected against content-based restriction.

Accepting that the state should restrict “cyberbullying” is rejecting U.S. v. Stevens, in which the Supreme Court rejected a balancing test for content-based restrictions and set out a categorical test.

No free-speech ad…