Other Voices: Why a cheerleader's Snapchat curses are worthy of Supreme Court protection

When Pennsylvania student Brandi Levy failed to make her high school’s varsity cheerleading team in 2017, she reacted with typical teenage melodrama. She cursed school, she cursed cheer, and she raised her middle finger for good measure. She did this on a Saturday at a convenience store, and she posted the rant to Snapchat, where her friends would see it for a fleeting moment before the post disappeared. Except her post didn’t go away. The middle finger, the words and even the emoji made it all the way to the Supreme Court, immortalized in a ruling that wisely sided with the cheerleader in a case with ramifications for public schools across America. The high court said last week that Levy’s school violated her First Amendment rights by booting her from the junior varsity cheerleading team over the Snapchat post. There is nothing to admire about Levy’s profane diatribe. Her speech is far from the dignified political expression of students in 1965 who wore black armbands to school in protest of the Vietnam War and were suspended — punishment that the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional in the landmark Tinker vs. Des Moines case. Still, Levy did not name the school or…
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