SPEECH POLICE: NC AG Josh Stein Wants to Empower Local School Districts to ‘Regulate Student Speech Off Campus

RALEIGH – And that’s why N.C. Attorney General Josh Stein, a Democrat, has, on North Carolina’s behalf, joined a brief sent to the Supreme Court of the United States, arguing that school just don’t have enough power to monitor the speech of students off campus and outside school hours.

Seriously; Stein and a bevy of Democrat attorneys general want school administrators — the increasingly Woke public school administrators — to have the power to hold kids accountable for their speech outside of school.

Reporting from North State Journal‘s A.P. Dillon:

“[…] The brief cites bullying and cyberbullying as valid reasons to allow K-12 school districts to monitor the speech of students off campus and outside school hours. According to Stein’s press release, the brief was filed in Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L., a case where a school district wanted to “hold students accountable” for their speech off campus.

“When bullies target students, they no longer just do it at school during the day,” said Stein. “Our young people can be bullied anywhere, at any time. It’s one of the most troubling consequences of technology, and the harm students experience can last long after graduation. I urge the Supreme Court to uphold schools’ ability to protect students from bullying, wherever they are.” […]

“Because of public schools’ obligations to protect students and promote learning, the Supreme Court has long given them more leeway to regulate student speech under the First Amendment than states have to regulate adults’ speech,” Stein’s release reads. “But the lower court in this case ruled that schools may never regulate students’ off-campus speech.”

As Stein mentions, a lower court is standing in the way of regulating student off-campus speech. The Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of B.L. 2020, stating that “Tinker does not apply to off-campus speech — that is, speech that is outside school-owned, -operated, or -supervised channels and that is not reasonably interpreted as bearing the school’s imprimatur.” […]”

Any an age where some teachers openly discriminate against conservative students, and proselytize in the class room as if their teaching certificate amounts to a Woke Mission, Stein and the Left want to give schools the power to punish students for ‘problematic’ thjinga they may say outside of school.

Of course, it is advanced under the guise of bullying. What will constitute bullying by a student outside of school sufficient to warrant punishment? Misgendering someone? Arguing the election was stolen? Trashing the absurdity of anti-racists? Can you be a valedictorian if you mock the inefficacy of masks?

Really; if local schools will have the power to punish your kid for off campus speech — when, as Dillon points out, we already have anti-bullying laws on state books — what is going to regulate the application of such authoritarianism so that it doesn’t immediately morph into it’s own form of bullying?

Read much more on the brief and the Leftist AGs attempt to regulate your kids off campus speech, here.