Hermitage School Board on Tuesday authorized appealing an appellate court’s decision in the Justin Layshock case.
Layshock was a Hickory High School student suspended for creating an unflattering profile of his then principal, Eric Trosch, in December 2005 on the MySpace social networking Web site.
Layshock and his parents, Donald and Cheryl, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, sued the school board in federal court and a judge agreed that the district had violated Layshock’s free-speech rights by disciplining him for a profile Layshock created on his grandmother’s computer.