Lessons from the Lord of the Flies: protecting students from Internet threats and cyber hate speech

The purpose of this article is to examine the legal and perhaps moral obligation of schools to protect students from cyberthreats and hate speech from other students and the boundaries of their ability to do so. Any examination of student free speech rights under the First Amendment must necessarily start with the seminal Supreme Court case Tinker v Des Moines Independent Community School District. The first prong of the Tinker test seems to fit well within the Internet context, as it simply looks to the message being communicated and analyzes whether it is indeed protected speech. The Tinker/Bethel/Hazelwood trilogy has survived the leap into the cyberage and the multiprong analysis is broad enough to provide a framework for regulating cyberspeech without unnecessarily restricting either student rights or endangering the educational function of the schools. With some slight additions, this framework is sufficient to meet the needs of schools and students alike.