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10 

MAHANOY AREA SCHOOL DIST. v. B. L. 

Opinion of the Court 

he  could  not  have  been  penalized  simply  because  govern-
ment  officials  considered  his  language  to  be  inappropri-
ate”).

B. L. spoke under circumstances where the school did not 
stand  in  loco  parentis.   And  there  is  no  reason  to  believe 
B. L.’s  parents  had  delegated  to  school  officials  their  own 
control of B. L.’s behavior at the Cocoa Hut.  Moreover, the 
vulgarity  in  B. L.’s  posts  encompassed  a  message,  an  ex-
pression  of  B.  L.’s  irritation  with,  and  criticism  of,  the
school and cheerleading communities.  Further, the school 
has presented no evidence of any general effort to prevent 
students  from  using  vulgarity  outside  the  classroom.  To-
gether, these facts convince us that the school’s interest in
teaching  good  manners  is  not  sufficient,  in  this  case,  to 
overcome B. L.’s interest in free expression. 

Second,  the  school  argues  that  it  was  trying  to  prevent 
disruption,  if  not  within  the  classroom,  then  within  the
bounds of a school-sponsored extracurricular activity.  But 
we can find no evidence in the record of the sort of “substan-
tial disruption” of a school activity or a threatened harm to
the  rights  of  others  that  might  justify  the  school’s  action. 
Tinker,  393  U. S.,  at  514.  Rather,  the  record  shows  that 
discussion of the matter took, at most, 5 to 10 minutes of an 
Algebra class “for just a couple of days” and that some mem-
bers of the cheerleading team were “upset” about the con-
tent  of  B.  L.’s  Snapchats.    App.  82–83.    But  when  one  of 
B. L.’s coaches was asked directly if she had “any reason to
think  that  this  particular  incident  would  disrupt  class  or
school  activities  other  than  the  fact  that  kids  kept  ask-
ing . . . about it,” she responded simply, “No.”  Id., at 84.  As 
we said in Tinker, “for the State in the person of school offi-
cials to justify prohibition of a particular expression of opin-
ion, it must be able to show that its action was caused by
something more than a mere desire to avoid the discomfort 
and unpleasantness that always accompany an unpopular 
viewpoint.”  393 U. S., at 509.  The alleged disturbance here