A pair of February 4 federal appeals court decisions from Pennsylvania involving ACLU clients made the important issue of how much authority school officials can exercise over students' out-of-school Internet speech as clear as, well … mud. See if you can figure it out.

In one case, student Justin Layshock used his grandmother's computer to post a mock profile of his principal on MySpace, using the principal's name and picture to pretend it was the principal. The profile said things like the principal was "too drunk to remember" his birthday and has been drunk many times; was a "big steroid freak" and belonged to "Steroids International," in the past month smoked a "big blunt" (I'm guessing most of you don't need me to explain what blunt means in a footnote, like the court did!), and took "pills"; does not have a "big dick," is a "big fag" and is "transgender."

Justin's principal was displeased (go figure!) so he suspended him for 10 days, kicked him out of all interscholastic activities, removed him from AP classes and stuck him in a class with low-performing students. The ACLU sued and got Justin back into classes pretty quickly.

In the other case, student J.S. used her parents' computer to post a mock profile of her principal on MySpace, not using his name but including his picture and suggesting he was a principal in Alabama. The profile said things like the principal was a "tight ass," "wonderful, hairy expressionless, sex addict, fagass put on this world with a small dick"; spent time with his child who "looks like a gorilla"; likes "fucking in [his] office" and "hitting on students and their parents"; and loves "sex of any kind," being a "dick head," and his "darling wife who looks like a man."

J.S.'s principal wasn't pleased either, so he suspended J.S. for 10 days.

So you've got two mock profiles of principals, both of which are sophomoric, crude and vulgar. Both were created from a home computer, without school resources, and were never physically brought into the school. Both schools claimed that the MySpace postings were "disruptive," but all four of the courts that reviewed the two fact patterns agreed there was minimal disruption, and certainly not enough to justify punishment by the school. Pretty similar facts so you'd expect the same result. But you'd be wrong.

In Layshock, the appeals court ruled that the school violated Justin's First Amendment free speech rights. The court observed that, "It would be an unseemly and dangerous precedent to allow the state in the guise of school authorities to reach into a child's home and control his/her actions there to the same extent that they can control that child when he/she participates in school sponsored activities," and allowing the school to punish Justin "would create just such a precedent." Clear enough.

But in the other case, the court upheld J.S.'s punishment. Two of the judges wrote (the third judge dissented) that just because the speech "originates from a computer located off campus," school officials should not be "left powerless to discipline the student." Ultimately, school officials have the same power, in and out of school, to regulate student speech "challenging" a school official's "fitness to hold his position by means of baseless, lewd, vulgar and offensive language."

So, you ask, how are the cases really different? Ok, here's what I can come up with. Justin was a high school senior and J.S. was in middle school. Justin lives in Western Pennsylvania, on the Ohio border; J.S. is in Northeastern Pennsylvania, near Scranton. Justin is a boy. J.S. is a girl. Justin didn't say "fuck" in his profile; J.S. did. Hmmm. It's hard to imagine any of these factors could explain the inconsistent result. One of our legal panel members may have summed it up best when he simply wrote, WTF!

Oh, one more difference: the judges. Six different judges on the two cases. Justin won his case 3-0. J.S. lost her case 2-1. So four appeals court judges thought that the schools violated the students' rights. Two judges, one of whom was district court judge specially assigned to hear the case, thought otherwise.

The issue of how much power school officials have over students' off-campus speech is growing in importance, as more kids have access to computers. The ACLU of Pennsylvania had hoped these cases would help clarify how to analyze these cases, but as you can see there was no such luck.

Over the past 40 years, courts have given school officials fairly broad latitude to regulate students' speech in school. All four of the Supreme Court's student-speech cases are based on the "special circumstances of the school environment," a factor that doesn't exist when the students aren't in school. And the Supreme Court has never ruled on this issue of how much power principals have over kids outside of school.

The ACLU's position is that school officials should not — and under the First Amendment do not — have the same authority to control what kids say when they are off campus as when they are in school. Out of school, kids' parents or guardians call the shots. School officials can talk to the parents if the kids post vulgar, disrespectful things on the Internet about teachers and principals, but we don't think they can use their official powers to punish the kids. At least one court got it right.

People have a clear constitutional right and a civic duty to report crimes they witness to the police. But what happens when the police are the ones committing the crime?

Such was the case for Harold Strickland, who witnessed two undercover police officers chase, then beat and kick another man after he was handcuffed and on the ground.

Strickland, 45, was walking in South Beach one evening in March 2009, talking to his sister on his cell phone, when he noticed two men, who were undercover Miami Beach officers, chase a young gay Hispanic man through the parking lot next to Flamingo Park on Michigan Avenue, drag him to the ground, and beat him. Strickland hung up with his sister and called 911, reporting to the emergency dispatch officer at the Miami Beach Police Department (MBPD) that someone was being beaten by the police officers in the parking lot, next to a parked car. The dispatcher asked for Strickland’s location and asked him to walk closer to the scene to read the license plate on the car.

But there was no license plate. And Strickland had caught the attention of the two men who were beating Doe. The men approached Strickland, took his cell phone and verbally assaulted him with anti-gay epithets. The officers spewed insults: “We’re sick of all the f---ing fags in this neighborhood,” pushed Strickland to the ground and tied his hands behind his back.

Strickland told them why he was walking up to them and calling 911, but the officers ignored his explanation . After one officer continued taunting Strickland with anti-gay remarks, Strickland said he would report them. In response, the police officers threatened Strickland by telling him that “guys like him disappear every day.”

Strickland and Doe were transported to MBPD headquarters where the verbal abuse continued. After first questioning what charges they could charge Strickland with, the two officers charged Strickland with loitering and prowling.

On February 3, the ACLU of Florida announced its intent to sue the City of Miami Beach and the two officers on behalf of Harold Strickland.

"Gay men have been reportedly targeted by Miami Beach police near Flamingo Park for decades. Often, police target gay men walking near Flamingo Park for nothing more than looking 'too gay,'" said the ACLU's Robert Rosenwald. Furthermore, “The issue here is not just the violation of Mr. Strickland's rights as a gay man." said Ray Taseff, cooperating attorney and co-counsel. "All people have a clear constitutional right and a civic duty to report police misconduct. When police arrest individuals for reporting police misconduct, the public's faith in law enforcement suffers."

Thanks to additional efforts by SAVE Dade, a local organization whose mission is to protect LGBT individuals from discrimination, the City Manager called a meeting with leadership that resulted in an order by City of Miami Beach Police Chief for an internal affairs investigation and a review of the reports filed by the two officers. According to a statement released by the Miami Beach Police Department “a decision was made to reassign both officers involved in the reported incident to administrative duties effective immediately and pending the conclusion of the investigation.” The officers are off the streets and behind desks now. On February 9, the Miami Beach LGBT Business Enhancement Committee will be meeting with the Chief of Police, Carlos Noriega, in an open forum to ensure that the proper measures are taken to prevent a recurrence of this behavior by Miami Beach police.

The incident has shed light on anti-gay sentiment within the Miami Beach Police Department, and the ACLU of Florida is equally concerned with the retaliation against those who report police misconduct. It's our hope that our lawsuit will bring justice to those who have been victimized by this kind of abuse.

Yesterday, The Washington Post reported that Google — the world’s largest Internet search company — is negotiating an information-sharing agreement with the National Security Agency (NSA) — the world’s largest network for routine, mass communications surveillance.

The partnership is supposed to help protect Google’s networks, but the ramifications of companies like Google working with the NSA are frightening.

The NSA — a component of the Department of Defense — is an intelligence collection agency with few effective checks against abuse, and no public oversight of its activities. The NSA sucks up the equivalent of the contents of the Library of Congress every six to eight hours, every single day. In the last decade, the NSA’s dragnet, suspicionless surveillance has targeted everyday Americans, in violation of the law and the Constitution. (To lean more about NSA spying, download our fact sheet on “America’s Surveillance Society”).

If companies like Google think they need the government’s help to secure their networks, then a civilian agency needs to step up to the task. Cybersecurity for the American people should not be handed over to a military spy agency, one that is insulated from public oversight and has a history of secretly exploiting vulnerabilities, rather than fixing them.

Concerned? You can take action today by sending a letter to Google, letting them know that you object to such a deal and value your privacy online.

Yesterday, the Department of Defense (DOD) quietly made public its decision to require that emergency contraception (EC or Plan B) be available at all overseas military facilities. (Until it was picked up by the press, only the most avid readers of the minutes of the quarterly meetings of the DOD Pharmaceutics and Therapeutics Committee could have known about the decision).

This is a welcome change: Today, women make up 15 percent of the military. More than 356,000 women currently serve in the Armed Forces and more than 222,000 women have been deployed thus far to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. It should go without saying that these women should have access to basic contraceptive care — EC can prevent pregnancy if taken less than 72 hours after unprotected sex or a contraceptive accident (the earlier the better).

The DOD deserves more credit than it sought for reversing a nearly decade-long policy that undermined servicewomen's reproductive health. But given what happened the last time DOD tried to make EC available to its servicewomen, it's easy to see why they might have been a bit gun-shy about publicity.

After EC became available in 1999, the press reported that nearly two-thirds of military treatment facilities (MTF) carried it. In February 2002, the DOD Pharmaceutics and Therapeutics Executive Council considered whether to officially add EC to the basic core formulary — the list of drugs that must be stocked at all military treatment facilities. Ethics consultants from all three military branches — hardly a group of rabid reproductive rights activists — had already concluded "that there are no apparent reasons to preclude the use of Plan B at MTFs, since it is an FDA-approved contraceptive and not, as some argue, an abortifacient." The council thus saw no reason that EC should not be "uniformly and immediately available" to servicewomen and voted to add it to the formulary.

However, when news of the decision became public, the then-Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs immediately rescinded the decision to place EC on the military formulary so that he could have a chance to "review" it. (I confess that I do read the minutes from the quarterly committee meetings, and I've never seen any drug submitted for a similar "review"). And so this FDA-approved contraceptive remained under "review" at the highest levels of DOD for more than seven years — until yesterday.

Hopefully, the decision to guarantee that EC is available to women serving overseas is the beginning, not the end, of needed changes. To reflect the reality of women's participation in the military, we must fully meet servicewomen's reproductive health needs — from access to birth control and regular gynecological exams to abortion care. Servicewomen dedicated to serving our country deserve no less.