Brandi Levy, a cheerleader that is former Mahanoy Area High School in Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania and an integral figure in a major U.S. case about free message, poses in a undated photograph provided by the United states Civil Liberties Union.
Danna Singer/Handout via REUTERS
April 23 (Reuters) – Two times after Mahanoy region senior School in Pennsylvania held its cheerleading tryouts, ninth-grader Brandi Levy was still fuming about being passed over for an area on the varsity squad.
While a younger woman had been selected for varsity, Levy was dealing with another year relegated to your junior varsity cheer squad. That Saturday afternoon in might 2017 – standing not on college grounds however in the Cocoa Hut convenience store in Mahanoy City into the state’s coal nation – Levy pulled away her cellphone and, plus a buddy, raised her center little finger to the digital camera.
Levy, age 14 at the time, posted the photo to the Snapchat social media marketing platform, including a caption utilising the exact same curse term four times to voice cheerleading, softball to her displeasure, school and “everything.”
That publishing prompted the school to banish her from the cheerleading squad for the year. It led to a major u.s. supreme court case testing the restrictions of America’s bedrock constitutional legal rights.
