Web site suit settled
by school
By BRIAN PRINCE,
GANNETT NEW JERSEY
From Home News
Tribune Online, November 8, 2005
OCEANPORT — School district
officials have agreed to a $117,500 settlement with former student Ryan Dwyer,
who sued the district after officials punished him for content on a Web site he
created.
The settlement was announced Sunday by the American Civil Liberties Union, and
follows a decision April 3, in which the U.S. District Court found Oceanport
school officials violated Dwyer's right to free speech.
"I feel really vindicated that it's finally over," Dwyer, 16, said Sunday.
Of the $117,500, the Board of Education paid approximately $12,500, with the
balance paid by the school board's insurance carriers, according to information
provided by the district.
Now an 11th-grader at Shore Regional High School in West Long Branch, Dwyer was
an eighth-grader at Maple Place Middle School in Oceanport when he created the
controversial Web site in April 2003. The site, which he created and
maintained on his own time from his home computer, contained criticisms of Maple
Place as well as a "guest book," in which visitors to the site could make
comments about the site and the school.
Dwyer voluntarily included a statement on the "guest book" Web page that no
postings should contain profanity or threats. After school officials
discovered the site, they suspended him for a week, banned him from playing on
the baseball team for a month and did not allow him to go on the eighth-grade
class trip.
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