Leroy v. Livingston Manor Central School District

One day before a jury found police officer Derek Chauvin guilty of George Floyd’s murder, plaintiff Case Leroy, a then-student at Livingston Manor High School, drove with three fellow students to pick up one of their siblings from a private dance class. While waiting in the studio parking lot, Case and his friends took a photograph simulating the incident that led to George Floyd’s death. Before leaving the dance studio, all three students posted the photo to their Snapchat stories. Case’s photo contained the caption “Cops got another.”

The First Amendment squarely protected Case's photograph, regardless of whether others found it provocative or offensive. He took the photo away from school grounds, outside school hours, and posted it to his private social media account. But when classmates and the general public reacted to Case’s photograph by threatening him and disrupting class, the school suspended Case.

The Southern District of New York upheld Case’s suspension. To defend students’ freedom to express themselves beyond the schoolhouse gates, FIRE filed a friend-of-the-court brief on appeal in the Second Circuit. FIRE’s brief, joined by the Manhattan Institute and the National Coalition Against Censorship, argues that Case’s suspension violates bedrock First Amendment principles and recent Supreme Court precedent drawing a critical distinction between a school's authority over students' on-campus and off-campus speech. FIRE’s brief urges the Second Circuit to reverse, and ensure public school administrators do not become a 24/7 board of censors over minors’ private expression.