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10 

MAHANOY AREA SCHOOL DIST. v. B. L. 

ALITO, J., concurring 

says or writes at all times of day and throughout the calen-
dar year.  See ante, at 7.14  Any such argument would run 
headlong into the fundamental principle that a State “may 
not deny a benefit to a person on a basis that infringes his 
constitutionally protected . . . freedom of speech even if he 
has no entitlement to that benefit.”15  Agency for Int’l Devel-
opment v. Alliance for Open Society Int’l, Inc., 570 U. S. 205, 
214 (2013) (internal quotation marks omitted).  While the 
in-school  restrictions  discussed  above  are  essential  to  the 
operation of a public school system, any argument in favor 
of expansive regulation of off-premises speech must contend 
with this fundamental free-speech principle. 

—————— 

14 There is no basis for concluding that the original public meaning of 
the free-speech right protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments 
was  understood  by  Congress  or  the  legislatures  that  ratified  those 
Amendments as permitting a public school to punish a wide swath of off-
premises student speech.  Compare post, at 2–4 (THOMAS, J., dissenting).  
At  the  time  of  the  adoption  of  the  First  Amendment,  public  education 
was virtually unknown, and the Amendment did not apply to the States.  
And as for the Fourteenth Amendment, research has found only one pre-
1868 case involving a public school’s regulation of a student’s off-prem-
ises speech.  In Lander v. Seaver, 32 Vt. 114 (1859), an 11-year-old boy, 
while  driving  his  father’s  cow  by  the  home  of  his  teacher,  called  the 
teacher “Old Jack Seaver” in the presence of other students.  Id., at 115 
(emphasis deleted).  The next day, the teacher “whipped him with a small 
rawhide.”  Ibid.  In a tort suit against the teacher for assault and battery, 
the Supreme Court of Vermont reversed the lower court’s judgment for 
the teacher but opined that the teacher had the authority to punish the 
student’s speech because of its effect on the operation of the school.  Id., 
at 120–121, 125.  This decision is of negligible value for present purposes.  
It does not appear that any claim was raised under the state constitu-
tional provision protecting freedom of speech.  And even if flinty Vermont 
parents  at  the  time  in  question  could  be  understood  to  have  implicitly 
delegated to the teacher the authority to whip their son for his off-prem-
ises speech, the same inference is wholly unrealistic today. 

15 Here,  the  Pennsylvania  Constitution  required  that  B. L.  and  all 
other students be offered “a thorough and efficient system of public edu-
cation.” Art. III, §14.