# Taylor Bell v. Itawamba County School Board

> Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit · August 20, 2015 · 799 F.3d 379

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9810694

## Case

- **Full name:** Taylor BELL; Dora Bell, Individually and as Mother of Taylor Bell, Plaintiffs-Appellants v. ITAWAMBA COUNTY SCHOOL BOARD; Teresa McNeece, Superintendent of Education for Itawamba County, Individually and in Her Official Capacity; Trae Wiygul, Principal of Itawamba Agricultural High School, Individually and in His Official Capacity, Defendants-Appellees
- **Court:** Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
- **Decided:** August 20, 2015
- **Citations:** 799 F.3d 379; 2015 U.S. App. LEXIS 14630; 2015 WL 4979135
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Dissent by Haynes
- **Judges:** Stewart, Jolly, Davis, Jones, Smith, Barksdale, Dennis, Clement, Prado, Owen, Elrod, Southwick, Haynes, Graves, Higginson, Costa
- **Nature of suit:** Private Civil Federal
- **Cited by:** 33 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9810694

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- holding the school may discipline a high school student for off-campus speech on his social media page that was directed intentionally at the school community and understood to be threatening, harassing, and intimidating without violating the student’s First Amendment rights
- holding that a school can address speech “intentionally direct[ed] at the school community . . . , even when such speech originated, and was disseminated, off-campus without the use of school resources”
- observing that the Tinker standard may be satisfied “either by showing a disruption has occurred, or by showing ‘demonstrable factors that would give rise to any reasonable forecast by the school administration of ‘substantial and material’ disruption” (emphasis omitted) (quot…
- observing that “the First Amendment does not, for example, allow a public school to punish a student for ‘writ[ing] a blog entry defending gay marriage’ from his home computer, even if the blog entry causes a substantial disruption at the school” (citing Snyder, 650 F.3d at 93…
- holding student’s First Amendment right to free speech was not violated when the school disciplined him after he posted his rap recording, which threatened two of his teachers, to his public Facebook profile page and later to YouTube

## Opinion text

HAYNES, Circuit Judge,
dissenting in part:
I respectfully dissent from the portion of the majority opinion affirming the district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of the School Board on Bell’s claim. 1 I conclude that the majority opinion greatly and unnecessarily expands Tinker to the' detriment of Bell’s First Amendment rights. I would reverse the district court’s grant of summary judgment to the School Board and remand for further proceedings on those matters for substantially the same reasons set forth in Section III of the original panel majority opinion. See Bell, 774 F.3d at 290-303.
. Credibility and inferences matter here, so I would not reverse the denial of Bell’s summary judgment motion.

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9810694. Public record. Not legal advice.