US Supreme Court ponders cheerleader's profanity in free speech flap

Levy, a former cheerleader at Mahanoy Area High School, poses in an undated photograph (Reuters) -A Pennsylvania teenager whose profanity-laced outburst on social media got her banished from her high school’s cheerleading squad is in the spotlight at the U.S. Supreme Court this week, arguing “I shouldn’t have to be afraid to express myself.” Brandi Levy, who made her Snapchat post away from school and on a weekend, is at the center of a major case testing the limits of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech. The nine justices on Wednesday are set to hear arguments in the Mahanoy Area School District’s appeal of a lower court ruling in favor of Levy that found that the First Amendment bars public school officials from regulating off-campus speech. Levy’s indelicate May 2017 Snapchat post came two days after Mahanoy Area High School, in Pennsylvania’s coal region, held its cheerleading tryouts. The ninth-grader, who had been a junior varsity cheerleader, was still infuriated about being left off the varsity squad. At a convenience store in Mahanoy City on a Saturday, she posted a picture of her and a friend holding up their middle fingers, adding a caption using the…
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