A school in Minnesota has paid a student $70,000 after it forced her to give up the passwords to her email and Facebook accounts.
Riley Stratton, then 13-years-old, was taken to a room and interrogated after school officials heard she’d called a teacher’s aide ‘mean’ in a Facebook post, which she had written outside school hours, and she was given an in-school suspension.
Stratton got in deeper hot water when the mother of a fellow student discovered sexual Facebook conversations between the girl and her son. That was when she was called to the office and forced to hand over her passwords. There was a deputy sheriff present while school authorities went through Stratton’s email and social media accounts.
Her attorney Wally Hilke won the case with the argument that the actions violated her freedom of speech and pointed out that they had punished her ‘for doing exactly what kids have done for 100 years — complaining to her friends about teachers and administrators. She was just expressing her personal feelings’.
‘I was a little mad at whoever turned me in ’cause it was outside school when it happened,’ Stratton told The Star Tribune.
She was so traumatised by the whole thing she is now being home-schooled.
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.