[myrmidon]

That still seems somewhat defensible to me; there has to be line somewhere (you probably would want to suspend students advertising crack cocaine use during school, right?). And "I got suspended during school despite doing something that was not literally illegal" is a weak position in the first place IMO.

But police knocking on your door and confiscating your device because you called some politician an "idiot" by posting an online meme seems almost unthinkable in the US, when even the president himself is slinging insults like that at political opponents all the time.

My point is not that there is clear black/white line and the US have free speech and Europe doesn't, just that the free speech/defamation tradeoff is slightly different.

[amalcon]

Important that it was not "during school". The student in question had not even been to school that day. He just showed up at an event that was near the school, that school officials were also at.

But your overall point - that not every population defines free speech the same way - is accurate. I think the difference here is just a bit less than sometimes implied.

[myrmidon]

Maybe, but it was during school hours. Every court ruling on this decided that it counted as "school speech", which makes sense to me, similarly to how a school should be able to suspend if you misbehave on a school trip IMO.