L’appello del 6° circuito, n° 22-1748, JASON KUTCHINSKI c. FREELAND COMMUNITY SCHOOL DISTRICT; MATTHEW A. CAIRY and TRACI L. SMITH , decide una lite promossa dall’alunno impugnante la sanzione disciplinare irrogatagli per aver dato le credenziali Instagram ad amici , autori di post diffamatori di docenti della scuola.
L’alunno non è infatti qualificabile come publisher o spealker, essendo invece coautore della condotta dannosa:
<<Like the First, Fourth, and Ninth Circuits, we hold that when a student causes, contributes to, or affirmatively participates in harmful speech, the student bears responsibility for the harmful speech. And because H.K. contributed to the harmful speech by creating the Instagram account, granting K.L. and L.F. access to the account, joking with K.L. and L.F. about their posts, and accepting followers, he bears responsibility for the speech related to the Instagram account.
Kutchinski disagrees and makes two arguments. First, Kutchinski argues that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, 47 U.S.C. § 230, bars Defendants from disciplining H.K. for the posts made by K.L. and L.F. This is incorrect. Under § 230(c)(1), “[n]o provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” To the extent § 230 applies, we do not treat H.K. as the “publisher or speaker” of the posts made by K.L. and L.F. Instead, we have found that H.K. contributed to the harmful speech through his own actions>>.
Che poi aggiunge:
<<Second, Kutchinski argues that disciplining H.K. for the posts emanating from the Instagram account violates H.K.’s First Amendment freedom-of-association rights. “The First Amendment . . . restricts the ability of the State to impose liability on an individual solely because of his association with another.” NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co., 458 U.S. 886, 918–19 (1982). “The right to associate does not lose all constitutional protection merely because some members of the group may have participated in conduct or advocated doctrine that itself is not protected.” Id. at 908. But Defendants did not discipline H.K. because he associated with K.L. and L.F. They determined that H.K. jointly participated in the wrongful behavior. Thus, Defendants did not impinge on H.K.’s freedom-of-association rights>>.
(notizia e link alla sentenza dal blog del prof. Eric Goldman)