Judge Sonia Sotomayor ruled against free speech

Bloggers beware. Judge Sonia Sotomayor ruled against free speech on the internet in 2007. A high school student was disqualified from running for school government because she posted a derogatory comment about a school administrator on her blog. The student and her mother went to court alleging her free speech rights were violated. Sotomayor joined two other judges in ruling that the student’s off-campus blog remarks created a “foreseeable risk of substantial disruption” at the student’s high school. They ruled that the teenager was not entitled to a preliminary injunction reversing a disciplinary action against her. NBC Connecticut reported:

In August 2007, Judge Sonia Sotomayor sat on a panel that ruled against an appeal in Doninger v. Niehoff.

Avery Doninger was disqualified from running for school government at Lewis S. Mills High School in Burlington after she posted something on her blog, referring to the superintendent and other officials as "douche bags" because they canceled a battle of the bands she had helped to organize.

The case went to court and in March 2008, Sotomayor was on a panel that heard Doninger’s mother’s appeal alleging her daughter’s free speech and other rights were violated. Her mother wanted to prevent the school from barring her daughter from running.

Sotomayor joined two other judges from the 2nd Circuit in ruling that the student’s off-campus blog remarks created a “foreseeable risk of substantial disruption” at the student’s high school and that the teenager was not entitled to a preliminary injunction reversing a disciplinary action against her, Education Week reports.