Here’s how it goes down: Student has issue with teacher. Student goes online, utilizes social networking to vent frustration, encourages others to do the same. Page is discovered by school officials, student is suspended. Student sues for violation of right to free speech. Suspended for allegedly “cyberbullying” the teacher on Facebook during her senior year, a Florida teen then files suit against the school principal.

The group she created on popular social networking site Facebook specified her English teacher’s name, featured a photograph of the teacher and invited other students to “express [their] feelings of hatred.” Contrary to this invitation to group-vent, the group never got much Facebook love, and in fact, the student who created the page was derided in site comments and people stood up for the embattled educator. The teen later deleted the group, but her school suspended her for three days anyway, citing “disruptive behavior” and “Bullying / Cyber Bullying Harassment towards a staff member.”

The former student’s lawsuit alleges that the suspension has besmirched her otherwise good name and that it is “unjustifiably straining her academic reputation and good standing.” Filed on Monday, the student’s lawsuit puts forth that no profanities were used and there were no stated threats against the teacher. The school’s suspension notice went only so far as to say that the offense stemmed from “an inappropriate site regarding her teacher on Facebook.” The student demands that the suspension be removed from her record, which raises the question: What’s worse to the college application board; you got suspended for dissing your teacher online, or you sued the principal because you got suspended from school for dissing your teacher online?

This particular lawsuit is just the latest in a string of similar cases involving social networking sites and cyber bullying. Some schools have gone so far as to ban sites like MySpace and JuicyCampus altogether, and the state of Missouri recently enacted legislature to combat “cyberbullying” following the Megan Meier case.

The teen’s attorney, Matthew D. Bavaro, brought up an interesting point with regards to allowable speech when he posited “If Katie had praised the teacher, would she have been punished?” Bavaro also argued that his client’s suppression of speech, online and off, did not threaten bodily harm or advocate any illegal activity.