Northampton County is a county in the northeastern section of the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. As of the 2020 census, the population was 312,951. Its county seat is Easton. The county was formed in 1752 from parts of Bucks County. Its namesake was Northamptonshire, England. The county seat of Easton was named for the country house Easton Neston in that shire.
Bethlehem Township is a township in Northampton County, Pennsylvania. It is a suburb of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and is part of the Lehigh Valley metropolitan statistical area, which has a population of 861,899 and is the 68th most populated metropolitan area in the U.S. as of the 2020 census.
Bethlehem is a city along the Lehigh River, split between both Northampton and Lehigh counties in the Lehigh Valley region of eastern Pennsylvania. As of the 2020 census, Bethlehem had a total population of 75,781, making it the eighth largest city in Pennsylvania. Of this, 55,639 were in Northampton County and 19,343 were in Lehigh County.
Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, 393 U.S. 503 (1969), was a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court that defined First Amendment rights of students in U.S. public schools. The Tinker test, also known as the "substantial disruption" test, is still used by courts today to determine whether a school's interest to prevent disruption infringes upon students' First Amendment rights.
Moravian University is a private university in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The institution traces its founding to 1742 by Moravians, descendants of followers of the Bohemian Reformation under John Amos Comenius. It claims to be the sixth-oldest college in the United States.
The Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) is one of a number of bills that the United States Congress proposed to limit children's exposure to pornography and explicit content online.
Repent America (RA) is a Christian organization based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the United States.
The Thomas More Law Center is a Christian, conservative, nonprofit, public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and active throughout the United States. According to its website, its goals are to "preserve America's Judeo-Christian heritage, defend the religious freedom of Christians, restore time-honored moral and family values, protect the sanctity of human life, and promote a strong national defense and a free and sovereign United States of America."
A speech code is any rule or regulation that limits, restricts, or bans speech beyond the strict legal limitations upon freedom of speech or press found in the legal definitions of harassment, slander, libel, and fighting words. Such codes are common in the workplace, in universities, and in private organizations. The term may be applied to regulations that do not explicitly prohibit particular words or sentences. Speech codes are often applied for the purpose of suppressing hate speech or forms of social discourse thought to be disagreeable to the implementers.
Northampton Area High School is a public high school in the Northampton Area School District and located in Northampton, Pennsylvania in the Lehigh Valley metropolitan area of eastern Pennsylvania.
Morse v. Frederick, 551 U.S. 393 (2007), is a United States Supreme Court case where the Court held, 5–4, that the First Amendment does not prevent educators from suppressing student speech that is reasonably viewed as promoting illegal drug use at or across the street from a school-supervised event. In 2002, Juneau-Douglas High School principal Deborah Morse suspended Joseph Frederick after he displayed a banner reading "BONG HiTS 4 JESUS" [sic] across the street from the school during the 2002 Winter Olympics torch relay. Frederick sued, claiming his constitutional rights to free speech were violated. His suit was dismissed by the federal district court, but on appeal, the Ninth Circuit reversed the ruling, concluding that Frederick's speech rights were violated. The case then went on to the Supreme Court.
Northampton Community College is a public community college in Pennsylvania with campuses in Bethlehem in Northampton County and Tannersville in Monroe County. The college, founded in 1967, also has satellite locations in the south side of Bethlehem and Hawley. The college serves more than 34,000 students a year in credit and non-credit programs.
Wilson Area School District is a public school district located in Northampton County, Pennsylvania in the Lehigh Valley region of eastern Pennsylvania. It serves the boroughs of Glendon, West Easton, and Wilson, and Williams Township.
Bethlehem Area School District is a public school district serving Bethlehem, the boroughs of Fountain Hill and Freemansburg and Bethlehem Township and Hanover Township in Lehigh County and Northampton County in the Lehigh Valley region of eastern Pennsylvania.
United States v. American Library Association, 539 U.S. 194 (2003), was a decision in which the United States Supreme Court ruled that the United States Congress has the authority to require public schools and libraries receiving E-Rate discounts to install web filtering software as a condition of receiving federal funding. In a plurality opinion, the Supreme Court ruled that: 1.) public libraries' use of Internet filtering software does not violate their patrons' First Amendment free speech rights; 2.) The Children's Internet Protection Act is not unconstitutional.
Jack Anthony Panella is a Judge on the Superior Court of Pennsylvania. He is a member of the Democratic Party. Prior to his election to the Superior Court, he was a Judge on the Court of Common Pleas of Northampton County, Pennsylvania.
The issue of school speech or curricular speech as it relates to the First Amendment to the United States Constitution has been the center of controversy and litigation since the mid-20th century. The First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech applies to students in the public schools. In the landmark decision Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, the U.S. Supreme Court formally recognized that students do not "shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate".
The Censorship of Student Media is the suppression of free speech by school administrative bodies of student-run news operations. While this has typically consisted of schools using their authority to control the funding and distribution of publications, in some cases even removal of articles, preventing distribution, sometimes forms of censorship extend to expression not funded by or under the official auspices of the school system or college. Typically student media is used as a form of expression, whether that be discussion of issues on campus, or plain expression of ideas and concepts.
Hazelwood School District et al. v. Kuhlmeier et al., 484 U.S. 260 (1988), was a landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States that held that public school curricular student newspapers that have not been established as forums for student expression are subject to a lower level of First Amendment protection than independent student expression or newspapers established as forums for student expression.
Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L., 594 U.S. ___ (2021), was a United States Supreme Court case involving the ability of schools to regulate student speech made off-campus, such as speech made on social media. The case challenged past interpretation of Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District and Bethel School District v. Fraser, previous Supreme Court decisions related to student speech which may be disruptive to the educational environment, in light of online communications.
