Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/20-255_g3bi.pdf
Page Number: 22.0

8 

MAHANOY AREA SCHOOL DIST. v. B. L. 

ALITO, J., concurring 

school’s exercise of a degree of authority that is commensu-
rate with the task that the parents ask the school to per-
form.  Because public school students attend school for only 
part of the day and continue to live at home, the degree of 
authority conferred is obviously less than that delegated to 
the head of a late-18th century boarding school, but because 
public school students are taught outside the home, the au-
thority conferred may be greater in at least some respects
than that enjoyed by a tutor of Blackstone’s time. 

So how much authority to regulate speech do parents im-
plicitly delegate when they enroll a child at a public school? 
The answer must be that parents are treated as having re-
linquished the measure of authority that the schools must 
be  able  to  exercise  in  order  to  carry  out  their  state- 
mandated educational mission, as well as the authority to 
perform any other functions to which parents expressly or
implicitly  agree—for  example,  by  giving  permission  for  a 
child to participate in an extracurricular activity or to go on 
a school trip. 

III 
I  have  already  explained  what  this  delegated  authority
means  with  respect  to  student  speech  during  standard 
classroom  instruction.  And  it  is  reasonable  to  infer  that 
this  authority  extends  to  periods  when  students  are  in 
school but are not in class, for example, when they are walk-
ing in a hall, eating lunch, congregating outside before the
school day starts, or waiting for a bus after school.  During
the entire school day, a school must have the authority to
protect  everyone  on  its  premises,  and  therefore  schools 
must be able to prohibit threatening and harassing speech.
An  effective  instructional  atmosphere  could  not  be  main-
tained in a school, and good teachers would be hard to re-
cruit and retain, if students were free to abuse or disrespect 
them.  And the school has a duty to protect students while 
in school because their parents are unable to do that during