Filming in class and posting it: what a school can and cannot limit

Start with Tinker v. Des Moines (1969). Three students in Des Moines, Iowa, wore black armbands to protest the Vietnam War and were suspended. The Court said students do not shed their free speech rights at the schoolhouse gate, but it also said a school may limit expression that materially and substantially disrupts class or invades the rights of other students. That second half is what lets a school control phones and cameras during the school day.

A rule that says no recording during instruction, or phones in a pouch from first bell to last, is a neutral rule about conduct, not about what you say. Courts treat those as easy for a school to justify. Many states and districts have tightened phone rules in the last few years, and the specific hours and penalties are in your district's student handbook, not in federal law.

Recording a teacher without telling them is a separate legal question. Some states let one person in a conversation record it; others require everyone's consent, and secretly recording can be a crime under state wiretap law. We could not confirm your state's rule here, so before you record anyone, look up your state's recording consent law or ask a legal-aid office.

B.L.'s post was made on a weekend, off campus, on her own phone, to her own Snapchat friends. The Court held that schools may sometimes regulate off-campus speech, but the school's reasons in her case were not strong enough to outweigh her right to speak. Three things mattered. Off campus, the school is rarely standing in for a parent. If a school could police speech both on and off campus, it could police everything a student says all day. And a school has an interest in protecting unpopular speech, because that is how democracy is taught.

The Court also listed off-campus speech a school probably can act on: serious bullying or harassment aimed at specific students or teachers, threats aimed at teachers or students, breaking the rules for online schoolwork, and breaking into school security systems. A video you post from home that mocks the school or complains about a class sits on B.L.'s side of the line. A video you post that targets a classmate, shows a fight you helped start, or reveals a test sits on the other side, and the discipline articles on this site explain what a hearing looks like when that happens.

One more wrinkle. Under FERPA, the federal student privacy law, a photo or video becomes an 'education record' when it is directly related to a student and the school keeps it. The U.S. Department of Education's student privacy office gives the example of a hallway surveillance video of two students fighting, used in discipline: it is now an education record of both students. That can include a phone video a parent or student hands to the school. Once it is an education record, the school needs written consent from a parent (or the student, at 18) before it can hand the video to police, unless an exception like a health or safety emergency applies.