Because of COVID-19 restrictions, lawyers will argue before court by telephone; no witnesses

Apr. 25—There will be no witnesses at the appeal hearing before the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday when the student free speech case of Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L. is heard by the nine justices.

The court has received documentation on the case from previous legal actions, and attorneys for both sides will present arguments to the court by telephone.

Mahanoy Area Superintendent Joie L. Green referred questions to the district's attorney, Michael I. Levin, who founded Levin Legal Group PC, Huntingdon Valley, in 1994.

"There are no witnesses. It is just the lawyers," Levin said. "There is one called the 'lawyer of record' who will argue it. We retained Lisa Blatt."

Blatt, a partner with Williams & Connolly LLP, Washington, D.C., has argued 40 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, prevailing in 37. The National Law Journal has called her a "visionary" and one of "the 100 most influential lawyers in America" while The National Journal referred to her as a "SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the United States) legend."

"She will be the first one to argue because we are the appellant" or petitioner, Levin said. "She will argue for 20 minutes unless the court wants to hear it longer. Then we give 10 minutes of our time to the acting (U.S.) Solicitor General (Elizabeth Prelogar), who represents the federal government. She filed a brief in support of the school district, as well."

Levin said the attorney representing Brandi Levy and her parents, Larry and Betty Lou Levy, American Civil Liberties Unit-Pennsylvania (ACLU-PA) Legal Director Witold "Vic" Walczak, will argue for 30 minutes unless the court wants to hear more.

"The hearing is remote only because of COVID," Levin said. "It is by telephone conference call that will be live-streamed audio only on C-SPAN. Attorney Blatt actually argued the first remote one they had last spring."

The decision will be announced by June 30.

Levin said he negotiated with Blatt and her firm to do the work "pro bono."

"The school board entered into an agreement with her either late spring or summer; she agreed to do it without charge," Levin said.

The Tinker Case

Walczak discussed the 1969 case of "Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District" and how it relates to the Mahanoy Area case.

The Tinker case holds that public school officials may regulate speech that would "materially and substantially" disrupt the work and discipline of the school, and that students lose some of their free speech rights on school grounds.

"The question in this (current) case is whether the Supreme Court is going to push those diminished rights outward so that students wouldn't have free speech rights anywhere in their lives," Walczak said.

"In school, you can't drop an F-bomb. They can punish you," he continued. "They can regulate what you can write in a student newspaper. They can prohibit you from making any kind of pro-drug statements. None of that would be constitutional outside of school or is right now, but that could all change depending on what the Supreme Court decides in the Levys' case."

The case will determine "what the law is going to look like in the future" and how that affects school discipline, Walczak said.

"There is no question that this is the most important student free speech case in more than a half-century, and it's coming out of Mahanoy," he said.

To listen to the oral arguments, go to c-span.org and select C-SPAN Radio.

Contact the writer: jusalis@republicanherald.com; 570-628-6023