On the forefront of social media privacy legislation, Maryland is close to passing a new law protecting students' online posts.
According to the Student Press Law Center (SPLC), the Maryland House of Delegates voted 132-7 in favor of Senate Bill 210, introduced Feb. 2 by Sen. Ronald Young (D). The bill aims to protect students in college and high school from an invasion of privacy, but it is also meant to relieve the institution's legal responsibility for students' online posts.
Bradley Shear, an attorney who specializes in social media privacy, advocated for the legislation in Maryland because it can work in favor of both parties if affects.
"This bill is not intended to protect people from saying or doing dumb things online," he told the SPLC. "It's designed to ensure that they have the same privacy protections that they have in the physical space but in the digital space."
SB 210 received unanimous support in the Senate and now only needs Gov. Larry Hogan's signature to become a law. Shear said he is "cautiously optimistic" that will happen, given the support the bill has already received.
While Maryland was not the first state to introduce such a bill for students, they were the first to do so for employees. In 2011, Young sponsored a bill that allowed employees the ability to deny their employers access to their social media accounts.
John Woolums, a spokesman for the Maryland Association of Boards of Education, argued the bill would seriously weaken schools' future cyberbullying investigations as well as their ability to detect threats of violence.
"You're not allowed to listen to someone else's phone calls or read their mail, so asking them for passwords for their private accounts is a violation of the First Amendment," Young said in Feb., according to the SPLC, arguing institutions "shouldn't be allowed" to ask a student for their passwords.
