INDIANAPOLIS (AP) - Three Indiana girls who discussed which classmates they would like to kill in Facebook posts adorned with smiley faces and LOLs have reached a settlement with the school district that expelled them for violating an anti-bullying policy.
American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana attorney Gavin Rose, who sued Griffith Public Schools on the girls' behalf, said Tuesday he could not discuss the details of the settlement.
Rose declined to say whether there was a cash settlement, but he did say the girls returned to Griffith Public Schools last fall.
Tom Wheeler, the Carmel attorney who represented the school district, did not immediately return a phone call Tuesday seeking comment.
The ACLU sued the school district about in April 2012, three months after the girls were expelled for making comments on Facebook about which of their classmates they would like to kill. The lawsuit alleged the district had violated the students' free-speech rights.
School officials said the girls violated school policy against bullying, harassment and intimidation and disrupted school activities. The school district filed court documents containing excerpts from among nearly 70 Facebook comments that were posted by the girls in January 2012. Those comments included names of at least five people they said they wanted to kill and discussions of using guns, knives, box cutters and gasoline and filling a bath tub with acid to dissolve a body.
But the girls' lawsuit said any reasonable person would have realized the 14-year-olds were only joking because they used emoticons such as smiley faces, terms that represent laughter including LOL, and capital letters that represent sarcasm.
The posts were made after school on the girls' personal electronic devices, not on school computers, and were visible only to those to whom the girls had allowed access.