Students at a private school in Los Angeles who posted internet death threats and anti-gay messages on a classmate’s webpage, can’t claim the constitutional protection of free speech, a California appeals court has ruled.
The parents of the boy targeted by the threatening and derogatory posts on his website, withdrew him from Harvard-Westlake School in Studio City and moved to Northern California to protect him from classmates who had incorrectly labeled him as gay and pronounced him “wanted dead or alive.”
The 2-1 ruling by the 2nd District Court of Appeal will allow a lawsuit to go forward that was brought by the 15-year-old boy’s father, reports the Los Angeles Times.
The 1st Amendment doesn’t protect hostile Internet banter if the messages can be taken as genuine threats of harm, the court ruled.
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Legal analysts said the decision sends a warning signal that there are boundaries even on the Internet, and that the court ruling also appears to toughen standards for court intervention in cyber-bullying cases.
