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 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 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.
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. The Court further held that by requiring the restrictions to be narrowly tailored and directly related to established professional conduct standards, we limit the potential for the university to create overbroad restrictions that would impermissibly reach into a university student’s personal life outside of and unrelated to the program.
This decision serves as a reminder to be thoughtful of public postings on Facebook, when the messages are directly related to a code of conduct or a professional standard. Certainly the mortuary school has an interest in protecting ethical conduct relating to its program and the donation of cadavers, thus allowing for restrictions on unfettered First Amendment rights.
