Free Speech

So argues a concurring opinion in today's Second Circuit decision in Leroy v. Livingston Manor Central School Dist., also speaking about speech that "callously cheer[s] on or condone[s]" "police brutality, ... religiously-motivated attacks on their houses of worship, sexual or gender-based violence, or any other type of targeted state or private violence."

Eugene Volokh | 10.30.2025 12:56 PM

I wrote earlier today about Judge Barrington Parker's majority opinion in this case (disclosure: I argued in the case on behalf of amici Center for Individual Rights and myself); here's a short excerpt from Judge Myrna Pérez's long opinion concurring in the judgment:

The common thread running through threats, bullying, and harassment—the types of off-campus speech that all generally agree must be regulable at least some of the time—is that they disrupt student learning by causing students to fear for their safety. While fear is not the only emotion that can disrupt learning, it is uniquely detrimental to students' ability to learn, and it must be within schools' power to protect both their students' physical safety and their feelings of safety…..

Obviously, if students fear their classmates will hurt them, they will be less able to learn. But learning can also be disrupted if students believe their classmates will callously cheer on or condone their being harmed outside of their schools. Students come to school with all kinds of fears about how they and those they love could be harmed inside and outside of school—whether they fear police brutality, forcible family separation by immigration authorities, religiously-motivated attacks on their houses of worship, sexual or gender-based violence, or any other type of targeted state or private violence.

Those fears doubtless weigh on students as they try to learn, so they implicate the........

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