NEW JERSEY — School officials will pay a former student $117,500 to settle a lawsuit he filed claiming his First Amendment rights were violated after administrators punished him for material posted on his Web site.
The settlement comes as a result of an April 3 decision in which a U.S. District Court found Oceanport School District officials violated Ryan Dwyer’s right to free speech, according to an article in the Asbury Park Press, a community paper.
School officials expressed satisfaction with the settlement, announced on Sunday, in a written statement issued by Armen McOmber, the board’s attorney.
“The Board of Education of the Borough of Oceanport is pleased to announce that the dispute between the Dwyer family and the Board of Education … is over,” the statement reads. “The Board of Education expressed its regret for the entire incident.”
Dwyer was an eighth grader at Maple Place Middle School in 2003 when school officials suspended him for a week, removed him from the school baseball team for a month and barred him from a class trip because of his “Anti-Maple Place” Web site. The site described the school as “downright boring” and urged visitors to sign a guest book to express their hatred for the school.
According to Dwyer’s lawsuit, filed in late 2003, the site was designed to provide a forum for students to criticize school officials and show students “why their school isn’t what it’s cracked up to be.”
The site instructed visitors not to use profanity or threaten teachers. Dwyer dismantled the site at the instruction of school officials less than a week after it went online.
In addition to the monetary damages, the statement says the district agreed to “conduct a seminar for its students, teachers and administrators on the relationship between rights granted to students by the United States Constitution and the right of Oceanport Public Schools to assure that the conduct of its students is consistent with Board Rules and Regulations and with the law.”
“I’m hopeful this will help ensure that free speech rights of students aren’t trampled on again,” Ryan Dwyer told the New York Post.
—by Clay Gaynor, SPLC staff writer
Case:
- Dwyer v. Oceanport Sch. Dist., et al., No. 03-6005, slip op. (D. N.J. Mar. 31, 2005).
Read Related Coverage:
- Students’ off-campus Web publications out of schools’ reach, two courts affirm Report, Spring 2005
- N.J. student sues school district that punished him for off-campus Web site Report, Spring 2004
- Student sues N.J. school after officials punished him for critical Web site News Flash, 1/7/2004