Blog Post

Jan 30, 2018

Tenth Circuit Leaves Unresolved When Off-Campus Social Media Posts Can Subject Students to Discipline

Click for PDF

Seyfarth Synopsis: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit’s recent opinion in Yeasin v. Durham, No. 16-3367, 2018 WL 300553 (10th Cir. Jan. 5, 2018), addresses the “tension between some students’ free-speech rights and other students’ Title IX rights to receive an education absent sex discrimination in the form of sexual harassment.” The Court of Appeals did not specify a test to be applied when a student’s alleged First Amendment right to free speech intersects another student’s alleged right to be free from harassment in a university community, but did affirm the district court’s decision that a KU administrator did not violate clearly established law when she expelled Yeasin for misconduct related to an off-campus incident and tweets.

Read the full blog post.