A seventeen year old Illinois high school student was kicked out of school and charged with disorderly conduct for placing a sex list on Facebook with “the names of approximately 50 female Oak Park River Forest High School students,” that “detailed their sexual behaviors, sexual characteristics and physical appearance. The list contained both explicit and derogatory language.” On the face of it this might sound like a violation of Illinois’ disorderly conduct statute which reads in part:

(a) A person commits disorderly conduct when he knowingly:
(1) Does any act in such unreasonable manner as to alarm or disturb another and to provoke a breach of the peace ¹

But laws are subject to the United States Constitution and the First Amendment forbids, with only a few exceptions, any law which makes “speech” illegal. And there is no question that anything put on Facebook is “speech.” Constitutional violations are of two types. Sometimes a statutes is unconstitutional on its own and sometimes it is the enforcement of a statute in a particular incident that is unconstitutional. In this case the disorderly conduct statute is not necessarily unconstitutional but its enforcement against the student for using his right to free speech appears to be unconstitutional. As Illinois criminal defense attorney, Chris M. Shepherd states on his blog, “if your alleged disorderly conduct is composed merely of speech, your First Amendment freedom of speech rights will be enough, in most cases, to trump the disorderly conduct accusation.”