If you are a faithful follower of UNC football players on Twitter, you are probably noticing a big hole in your Twitter updates. After several insensitive and questionable Tweets, the football program has decided to ban the team’s use of Twitter all together.
As a public university, UNC shouldn’t be silencing a person’s outlet for free speech, effectively infringing on their first amendment rights.
Earlier in the semester, the athletic department decided to monitor athletes’ Tweets more carefully by requiring every team to designate someone to monitor their accounts.
That was a reasonable plan. Athletes are part of the public face of the University and it makes sense for the athletic department to offer guidance to players on how to manage their online presence.
However, the football team’s decision to ban Twitter all together takes things too far. Student athletes are under more media scrutiny and play a larger role in the University’s PR strategy, but they are still citizens who have the same first amendment rights as any other student.
UNC is not a private institution. It is a state sponsored, government-funded university. So the decision to ban Twitter for football players is a government restriction on free speech.
The decision is an unconstitutional prior restraint on players’ rights to publish Tweets.
Legally, it is difficult to defend UNC’s prohibition of an outlet for free speech for football players.
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled on many occasions that prior restraints on publication are legal under only the narrowest of circumstances. Embarrassing and insensitive Tweets by football players do not fall into any of these categories.
