EFF Urges Court to Protect Student Speech adn Privacy from School Surveillance

EFF filed an amicus brief urging the Arizona District Court to protect public school students’ freedom of speech and privacy by holding that the use of a school-issued laptop or email account does not categorically mean a student is “on campus.” We argued that students need private digital spaces beyond their school’s reach to speak freely, without the specter of constant school surveillance and punishment.

Surveillance Software Exposed a Bad Joke Made in the Privacy of a Student’s Home

The case, Merrill v.Marana Unified School District involves a marana High School student who, while at home one morning before school started, asked his mother for advice about a bad grade he received on an English assignment. his mother said he should talk to his English teacher, so he opened his school-issued Google Chromebook and started drafting an email. The student then wrote a series of jokes in the draft email that he deleted each time. The last joke stated: “GANG GANG GIMME A BETTER GRADE OR I SHOOT UP DA SKOOL HOMIE,” which he narrated out loud to his mother in a silly voice before deleting the draft and closing his computer.

Within the hour,the student’s mother received a phone call from the school principal,who said that Gaggle surveillance software had flagged a threat from her son and had sent along the screenshot of the draft email. The student’s mother attempted to explain the situation and reassure the principal that there was no threat. Still, despite her reassurances and the student’s lack of disciplinary record or history of violence, the student was ultimately suspended over the draft email-even though he was physically off campus at the time, before school hours, and had never sent the email.

After the student’s suspension was unsuccessfully challenged, the family sued the school district alleging infringement of the student’s right to free speech under the First Amendment and violation of the student’s right to due process under the Fourteenth Amendment.

Public school Students Have Greater First Amendment Protection for Off-Campus Speech

The U.S. Supreme Court has addressed the First Amendment rights of public school students in a

Digital Surveillance and Students’ First Amendment Rights

A recent case before the courts raises important questions about student speech and privacy in the digital age. The core issue? Whether a school can claim authority over a student’s speech simply because they’re using a school-issued device or cloud account, even when that student isn’t physically on campus.

Our amicus brief supports the plaintiffs’ First Amendment arguments by focusing on surveillance. We believe digital speech and digital privacy are closely connected.

As we explained, Marana Unified School District, like many schools, provides students with free Google Chromebooks. They also require students to have a Google Account to access apps like Gmail through Google workspace for Education.

Marana Unified School district also uses three surveillance technologies built into Chromebooks and Google Workspace: Gaggle, GoGuardian, and Securly. These tools can monitor almost everything students do online – from emails and documents (even drafts!) to the websites they visit.

School Digital Surveillance Chills Student Speech and Further Harms Students

in our amicus brief, we made four key arguments against treating any use of a school device or account as “on campus,” even when a student is off campus or it’s outside of school hours.

First, we pointed out that such a rule would mean students never have a break from school authority. This goes against the Supreme Court’s warning in Tinker v. Des Moines, which said schools shouldn’t try to regulate “all the speech a student utters during the full 24-hour day.” There needs to be a place that’s truly “off campus” for public school students,even when they’re using digital tools.