David Kravets, WIRED:
The Supreme Court declined Tuesday to clarify on what grounds public schools may punish students for their off-campus online speech.
The justices have not squarely addressed the student-speech issue as it applies to the digital world — one filled with online social-networking tools such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and others. The issue before the justices tests whether public schools may discipline students who, while off campus, use social-networking sites to mock school officials.
The lower courts have been all over the map on the First Amendment issue because they maintain they have been saddled with a Vietnam War-era high court precedent that predates the internet.
The issue hasn’t been touched in 43 years. A lot has happened in that time.