The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit laid the smack down on Avery Doninger today. Effectively putting an end to the largest law suit ever brought in part over eligibility for the high office of Senior Class Secretary.
Four years ago, Ms. Doninger was in high school. She became upset when administrators at Lewis L. Mills High School in Burlington informed the student council that a battle of the bands competition had to either be rescheduled or moved to a different venue because the teacher in charge was unable to attend.
Ms. Doninger then committed the cardinal sin of blogging – she posted while angry. On her livejournal account she wrote the following:
jamfest is cancelled due to douchebags in central office. here is an email that we sent out to a ton of people and asked them to forward to everyone in their address book to help get support for jamfest. basically, because we sent it out, Paula Schwartz is getting a TON of phone calls and emails and such. we have so much support and we really appriciate [sic] it. however, she got pissed off and decided to just cancel the whole thing all together. anddd [sic] so basically we aren’t going to have it at all, but in the slightest chance we do it is going to be after the talent show on may 18th. anddd.. [sic] here is the letter we sent out to parents.
Surprisingly, calling school administrators douchebags didn’t cause them to change their decision on Jamfest.
The only discipline school administrators imposed was to prevent Ms. Doninger for running for Senior Class Secretary. Ms. Doninger then filed suit claiming her first amendment rights were violated.
Today the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed the district court and found qualified immunity for school administrators. Further, the court found that the administrators acted reasonably. Put more bluntly, the Second Circuit disagreed with Ms. Doninger and held that the administrators were not “douchebags”.
No word on if Ms. Doninger has posted her thoughts on the Second Circuit’s ruling.