Georgia’s Republican leadership said fighting cyberbullying will be a top priority when the legislature convenes in January.
Sen. Jason Anavitarte, a Dallas Republican, said he plans to file a bill to tackle the issue, but he said the specifics of the plan are not yet hammered down.
“This legislation, when we introduce it, is going to be modeled after some similar states like Louisiana,” he said. “There are some bad examples out there that we won’t be copying because we do want to be sensitive to the First Amendment protection for citizens across the state.”
(READ MORE: Certain kinds of bullying are up at Hamilton County Schools)
Louisiana’s law defines cyberbullying as “the transmission of any electronic textual, visual, written or oral communication with the malicious and willful intent to coerce, abuse, torment or intimidate a person under the age of 18,” and proscribes a fine of up to $500, a sentence of up to six months or both.
Anavitarte did not point to any specific states as bad examples, but in 2014, New York’s highest court threw out a cyberbullying law on First Amendment grounds, and attempts to eliminate cyberbullying in other states have faced similar hurdles.
“There’s going to be teeth within the legislation itself,” said Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, who joined Anavitarte at a Capitol news conference Monday to introduce the planned bill. “That’s not going to be limited to school districts, it’s going to have teeth in it where the people perpetrating these things, we’re going to try to hold them accountable.”
(READ MORE: North Georgia family sues school over alleged bullying, harassment of daughter)
Jones said legislators will partner with school systems and social media companies to craft the bill.
FREE SPEECH
Some free speech advocates said schools or districts interfering with a student’s off-campus speech violates the First Amendment.
In 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of a Pennsylvania high school student on free speech grounds who was suspended from the cheerleading team after making a profane social media post criticizing her school.
But the justices wrote that schools’ ability to regulate student speech “do not always disappear when that speech takes place off campus,” and listed “serious or severe bullying or harassment targeting particular individuals” as a circumstance in which schools may implement regulation or punishment, even if it takes place off campus, if the speech could cause a disruption on campus.
(READ MORE: Victims and parents demand changes to Hamilton County Schools bullying policies)
Parents and victims said cyberbullying can be more pernicious than traditional bullying because it is not limited to school hours. The anonymity of the internet can spur bullies to be more vicious than they would be in person, and victims may not even know who is tormenting them. Widespread adoption of social media among tweens and teens has meant bullies can spread mean messages to much wider audiences than school-ground taunts.
In a study published earlier this year, the Cyberbullying Research Center found that in 2021, 23.2% of 13- to 17-year olds nationwide reported experiencing cyberbullying within the previous 30 days, up from 17.2% in 2019 and 16.7% in 2016.
Read more at GeorgiaRecorder.com.