Thanks again for the detailed responses. I agree with you on these points. It is hard to have a conversation in these threads because often if you don't just blatantly say it's a first amendment violation and case closed you get downvoted and your comments get hidden. The composition of the court also makes a difference in how these cases end up being decided. In Morse Thomas is of the opinion that the First Amendment was never meant to apply to students at school in the first place. We've not got Gorsuch who is another strict originalist and could lean to that extreme as well. Qualified immunity was another part of the Morse case and SCOTUS didn't even examine that because they determined the First Amendment wasn't violated. The dissenting opinions included the idea that because of qualified immunity they never had to look at the First Amendment issue at all. So something that isn't being talked about at all in these threads in addition to the really muddy First Amendment issue is that the student could win on the First Amendment issue and still essentially lose the case because the principal has qualified immunity.