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Page Number: 41.0

8 

MAHANOY AREA SCHOOL DIST. v. B. L. 

THOMAS, J., dissenting 

effect on a football program when done by a regular student 
than when done by the captain of the football team.  So, too, 
here. 

Second, the majority fails to consider whether schools of-
ten will have more authority, not less, to discipline students
who  transmit  speech  through  social  media.    Because  off-
campus speech made through social media can be received 
on campus (and can spread rapidly to countless people), it 
often will have a greater proximate tendency to harm the 
school environment than will an off-campus in-person con-
versation. 

Third, and relatedly, the majority uncritically adopts the
assumption  that  B. L.’s  speech,  in  fact,  was  off  campus. 
But, the location of her speech is a much trickier question
than the majority acknowledges.  Because speech travels,
schools sometimes may be able to treat speech as on campus 
even though it originates off campus.  Nobody doubts, for 
example, that a school has in loco parentis authority over a
student (and can discipline him) when he passes out vulgar 
flyers on campus—even if he creates those flyers off cam-
pus.  The same may be true in many contexts when social 
media speech is generated off campus but received on cam-
pus.  To be sure, this logic might not apply where the on-
campus presence of speech is not proximately connected to 
its  off-campus  origin—as  when  a  student  “wholly  acci-
dental[ly]” brings a sibling’s sketch to school years after it
is created.  Porter v. Ascension Parish School Bd., 393 F. 3d 
608,  615,  617–618  (CA5  2004).  This  break  in  proximate
causation might occur more often when a school prohibits
the use of personal devices or social media on campus.  See 
Tr.  of  Oral  Arg.  68–69.    But  where  it  is  foreseeable  and 
likely that  speech will travel onto campus, a school has a 
stronger claim to treating the speech as on-campus speech. 
Here, it makes sense to treat B. L.’s speech as off-campus
speech.  There is little evidence that B. L.’s speech was re-
ceived on campus.  The cheerleading coach, in fact, did not