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Labor & Employment Law

: New York Public Personnel Law

Teacher Has No First Amendment Right To A MySpace Account

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Teacher Has No First Amendment Right To A MySpace Account
Source: Adjunct Law Prof Blog; Reproduced with permission. Copyright © 2008, Mitchell H. Rubinstein, Esq., Adjunct Professor of Law, St. Johns Law School and New York Law School, All rights reserved http://lawprofessors.typepad.com:80/adjunctprofs/

Spanierman v. Hughes, ___F. Supp. 2d___ (D. Conn. Sept. 16, 2008), is an important Education Law as well as First Amendment case. A federal lower court held that a probationary teacher failed to show his constitutional rights were violated when his school did not renew his teaching contract after it received complaints of inappropriate contact with students via his MySpace page.

Interestingly the court found that the teacher was acting as a private citizen, but the adverse action being 5.5 months after the posting in question was too remote in time to establish a casual connection. Additionally, as the court stated the school was able to demonstrate that it would have taken the action in question anyway:

Moreover, even if the Plaintiff had established this causal connection, the Defendants could still prevail by demonstrating by a preponderance of the evidence that they would have taken the same adverse action in the absence of the protected speech, or that the Plaintiff?s speech was likely to disrupt school activities, and the likely disruption was sufficient to outweigh the First Amendment value of plaintiff?s speech. See Mandell, 316 F.3d at 382-83. In the court?s view, the Defendants would have taken the same adverse action absent the existence of the poem on the Plaintiff?s MySpace page. All the evidence indicates that the action taken against the Plaintiff resulted from his interactions with Emmett O?Brien students. There is no indication that the poem in any way played a part in the decision to not renew the Plaintiff?s employment contract.In addition, the Defendants have submitted evidence supporting the argument that the Plaintiff?s conduct on MySpace, as a whole, was disruptive to school activities.

This decision is very lengthy (41 pages) and full of cites. A variety of other constitutional claims such as Equal Protection and Due Process were considered and rejected by the court.

Researchers and lawyers may want to take a look at this case.

Mitchell H. Rubinstein

Full post as published by New York Public Personnel Law on November 04, 2008 (boomark / email).