Well, if someone says or implies that these students shouldn't be legally allowed to say the things they say, that's an issue with free-speech consequences. It's really quite patently obvious.

Now with that said, of course, it's important to what we have in the US isn't a constitutionally-given right to Absolute Free Speech, we have a natural right to some very high measure of freedom in our speech and a constitutional prohibition stating "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech" (and jurisprudence extending that down to many non-Congress government entities).

Congress and other bodies can and do make laws which, say, prohibit a variety of things like direct incitement to prompt, violent action... or fraud... or malicious mischeif... things which may involve speech, but for which the courts have said certain restrictions can pass muster anyway, if they're limited enough. And our jurisprudence does afford local school boards and principals additional power on their own campuses.

Anyway...

I'll just say that it would be really nice if people used their freedom of speech more nicely than all this.

>Well, if someone says or implies that these students shouldn't be legally allowed to say the things they say, that's an issue with free-speech consequences. It's really quite patently obvious.

HAS somebody said or implied that? I certainly didn't notice it in the article; it seems like what you're saying here is "Well, if somebody makes it an issue about free speech, then it's obviously about free speech", which I'm not going to argue with but is also not really the point.