MLM Successfully Defends School District’s Disciplinary Determination in Federal Court
Murphy, Lamere & Murphy, P.C. won an important victory for public schools throughout the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in Doe et al., v. Hopkinton Public Schools et al., 9 F.4th 493 (1st Cir. 2021), successfully defending against an appeal of a school’s decision to impose student discipline for collective bullying. This decision represents a case of first impression in the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit considering the issue of “collective” bullying of a victim by a group of students.
The case involved eight members of a high school sports team who were accused of bullying a fellow teammate in an online Snapchat group in which the victim was not a participant. The victim was also bullied during bus rides to and from hockey games by fellow teammates who took photographs and videos of him without his consent. After the victim’s parent filed a bullying complaint, the school conducted a thorough investigation and ultimately determined the students in the Snapchat group had collectively engaged in bullying of the student under the Massachusetts anti-bullying statute, M.G.L. c.71, §37O. Several students filed a lawsuit in the federal District Court for the District of Massachusetts appealing the resulting disciplinary action and, the District Court found in favor of the school in Doe et al. v. Hopkinton Public Schools, 490 F.Supp.3d 448 (D. Mass 2020), the appellants filed a further appeal to the First Circuit.
The First Circuit affirmed the District Court’s finding that the school administrators acted reasonably in disciplining the appellants for their collective speech and conduct, finding that the Appellants were each active participants in making derogatory comments about the victim in the Snapchat group, regardless of the number of their individual posts. The First Circuit emphasized the deference due to school administrators’ disciplinary determinations and found it was reasonable for the school officials to find that the appellants’ behavior infringed on the rights of the victim to be free from bullying, citing to the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in B.L. v. Mahanoy Area School District, 141 S. Ct. 2038 (2021) (“Bullying is the type of conduct that implicates the governmental interest in protecting against the invasion of the rights of others.”). In making its decision, the First Circuit further upheld the constitutionality of M.G.L. c.71, §37O, as well as the limitations of another Massachusetts law governing the free speech rights of students, M.G.L. c.71 §82.
The case represents an important marker for the ability of school administrators to protect students from bullying and harassment, particularly given the ubiquity of students' use of social media and its propensity to blur the line between in-school and out-of-school conduct.
A number of outside organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, the National School Boards Association, the Massachusetts Association of School Committees, and the Massachusetts Attorney General, filed amicus curiae briefs in support of the school district's position. The school district was represented in the case by MLM attorneys Elizabeth F. Toner and Joshua R. Coleman.
