Student Athletes and Social Media
Marcus Allan Hauer has published The Legal Issues of Banning Student-Athletes’ Social Media Speech. Here is the abstract.Â
An increasing number of public universities have banned their student-athletes from using twitter out of fear of players tweeting something that will embarrass the team and the school. This brings up important questions of whether these bans are constitutional, as these are public universities and the bans preemptively restrict the speech of the players. To further complicate the matter, some schools impose the ban only on football players and do not extend the ban to other student-athletes. The question is timely, as the bans are relatively new, and appear to have first gained attention within the six months. This topic is relevant because were a case to be brought in court, it is unclear how a court would decide the legality of the issue. The question is, are these bans constitutional?
Download the paper from SSRN at the link.