Court rules for students in Pennsylvania speech cases (Reuters)

PHILADELPHIA – A federal appeals court here has ruled in favor of two school students who were disciplined in different districts for creating what lawyers called parodies of their principals on the MySpace social network site.

"The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit made clear ... that schools cannot punish students for out-of-school speech that does not create a substantial and material disruption inside the school," said the American Civil Liberties Union, which represented the students.

"I think the message is louder for school officials than it is for the kids," ACLU lawyer Witold Walczak, the organization's Pennsylvania legal director, said Tuesday.

And that message, he said, is that the authority of school officials is less for conduct outside the school than it is for conduct inside.

Terry Snyder, mother of one of the students who was referred to in the legal papers as only "JS," said she disciplined her daughter for her behavior while she was a student in the Blue Mountain School District, in central Pennsylvania north of Reading.

"I punished her for that," said Snyder Tuesday. "I'm the one who should have punished her."

But the school district insisted on a 10-day suspension, and that led to the lawsuit.

The court decision released Monday said Snyder's daughter created a MySpace profile that made fun of her middle school principal in 2007. The court said the profile contained adult language and sexually explicit references.

In an 8-6 decision, the Circuit Court said the district violated the girl's First Amendment rights. The girl graduated this year from the Blue Mountain high school, and is headed for college.

In a separate case, the court ruled 14-0 in favor of a student in the far western part of Pennsylvania, Hermitage, a suburb of Sharon.

"We hold," wrote the court in a case involving then high school student Justin Layshock, who is now in college, "that under these circumstances, the First Amendment prohibits the school from reaching beyond the school yard to impose what might otherwise be appropriate discipline."

The court said Layshock, in 2005, created what he called a parody profile of his high school principal on his grandmother's computer. In it, he posed such questions as "birthday" with the response "too drunk to remember."

The principal thought the remarks were demeaning, and Layshock was suspended for 10 days.

His parents were not able to be reached for comment, but in a 2006 statement attached to an ACLU news release Don and Cherie Layshock said their son was punished by them. They said he apologized to the principal, twice.

"He is sorry and embarrassed by what he calls a dumb mistake," that statement said.

Hermitage school officials could not be reached for comment, and the Blue Ridge Superintendent, Robert Urzillo, said he had not been in his current job at the time.

(Editing by Jerry Norton)

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What President Obama’s immigration speech tells us about 2012

President Obama has a delicate dance to do on immigration reform. Mark Wilson/Pool via Bloomberg President Obama’s speech Tuesday in Texas was cast as an attempt at restarting the conversation about comprehensive immigration reform but will almost certainly land with a dull thud in a Congress wary of taking on an issue so fraught with political pitfalls.

Obama, of course, knows that. And so, his speech today is rightly understood — and analyzed — as a political document rather than a policy one.

So, what does the speech tell us about how immigration fits into Obama’s broader political strategy in 2012?

Viewing it through that political lens, the speech is — on its face -- trying to serve two very different constituencies.

On the one hand are Hispanics, the fastest growing demographic group in the country and one that has voted heavily for Democrats in recent elections. (Obama carried the Latino vote with 67 percent in 2008, Democrats won the group with 60 percent in 2010.)

Hispanics, broadly, support the idea of a comprehensive immigration reform that includes a path to citizenship for the 11 million (or so) people in the country illegally.

Obama made a bow to this sentiment early in the address; “We define ourselves as a nation of immigrants — a nation that welcomes those willing to embrace America’s precepts,” he said.

The other constituency at which Obama’s speech was aimed is independent/swing voters who tend to view the idea of comprehensive immigration reform more skeptically.

Obama touted a series of border enforcement successes under his watch — the construction of a border fence, the seizure of 31 percent more drugs etc. — as evidence that he had listened to (and answered) critics who said that securing the border was a sine qua non for comprehensive immigration reform.

“The presence of so many illegal immigrants make a mockery of all those who are trying to immigrate legally,” he added.

It’s a delicate political dance. Obama has to make clear to Hispanics that he shares their vision of the American dream while simultaneously sending a message to swing voters that the rule of law matters and that he has put policies in place that are actually making the border more secure.

His strategy to do just that — at least judging from his speech in Texas — is two-pronged: a straight-forward economic appeal and a broader (and oft-repeated) message about the need for Washington to take on big problems.

Several times in his speech in El Paso, the president sought to cast the need for immigration reform in economic terms.

“Immigration reform is an economic imperative,” he said at one point; At another, he argued that “one way to strengthen the middle class is to reform our immigration system, so that there is no longer a massive underground economy that exploits a cheap source of labor while depressing wages for everyone else.”

Obama and his political team know that the economy is, by far, the most important issue for most voters heading into 2012. Immigration, well, isn’t. But, by twinning the two — rhetorically at least — Obama is seeking to make clear that immigration should matter to anyone worried about the future of the country’s economy, giving it a relevance beyond what it currently has in many peoples’ minds.

Then there is Obama’s less specific appeal to the widespread belief — across voters of all demographic groups — that Washington is playing politics at the expense of the public.

“We’ve seen good faith efforts — from leaders of both parties — fall prey to the usual political games,” he said. Later, Obama said that “we have to put the politics aside”, adding: “Washington is behind the country on this.”

That idea is indicative of Obama’s larger messaging as he heads into his 2012 reelection campaign — that Washington is resistant to doing big things but that he has demonstrated an ability to make the gears of political power work for average people.

It’s a complicated approach to a complicated issue. But it’s one with significant political implications as the President seeks to re-build — and grow — the coalition that helped elect him in 2008.

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