Free Speech Group Says West Virginia Football Coach’s Ban on TikTok Dances Violates First Amendment
‘Because student-athletes are students first, their right tofree expression off the field must be commensurate to other students on campus,’ insists the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.
A football coach at West Virginia University who banned his team’s members from posting dancing videos on TikTok is being targeted by a free speech advocacy group who claims that his Footloose-esque mandate violates his players’ constitutionally-ordained rights.
“Coach Rodriguez and WV continue to violate the First Amendment,” the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression wrote in a letter to WVU’s director of athletics. “They must acknowledge that student-athletes do not shed their expressive rights when players join a sports team and clarify that posting dancing videos on TikTok is protected First Amendment activity.”
The conflict began in March when coach Rich Rodriguez announced a new rule for sharing content on Tiktok: no dancing videos. The players, however, would still be permitted to share any other kinds of content on their TikTok accounts.
“They’re going to be on it, so I’m not banning them from it,” Mr. Rodriguez said. “It’s like, look, we try to have a hard edge or whatever, and you’re in there in your tights dancing on TikTok ain’t quite the image of our program that I want.”
Showcasing dance moves on TikTok has become a favored pastime for many high school and college sports stars, whose athleticism and impressive physiques often lead their videos to go viral.
A TikTok clip of Boise State’s running back, Ashton Jeanty, dancing shirtless to a 2010 rap song “Ball” has racked up 1.9 million views and has been liked 183,000 times. The University of Colorado Boulder’s 2024 Heisman Trophy winter, Travis Hunter, showed off his trophy — and his dance moves — in a TikTok video that has been played 10.7 million times and has drawn 1.1 million likes.
Social media can help young players develop a following and a fan base independent of their team. Mr. Rogruigez, however, criticized the trend of being “all about the individual.” Football, he said, “is one of the last things that has got to be more about the team than the individual.”
FIRE informed the university in a March 17 letter that the school, “as a public institution” is “bound by the First Amendment to protect student expression” — including students’ rights to post on social media.
FIRE cited a 2021 Supreme Court ruling which determined that a Pennsylvania school district violated the First Amendment by punishing a member of the cheerleading squad for sharing an image of herself and a friend raising their middle fingers with the caption “F*** school f*** softball f*** cheer f*** everything.”
“Because student-athletes are students first, their right to
free expression off the field must be commensurate to other students on campus,” the group insisted. FIRE closed out the letter by requesting that the coach reverse the decision and share a “substantive response” to the letter “no later than March 21, 2025.”
Given that Mr. Rodriguez failed to reply to the letter by the deadline, FIRE upped the ante last week, issuing a second memo, expressing the group’s disappointment over the schools’ silence. “As our previous letter outlined, this directive violates the First Amendment rights of WV student-athletes, which the university is legally bound to protect.”
Although FIRE noted that the ban was reportedly delivered orally, as opposed to in writing, “its existence and enforcement violates students’ expressive rights,” the group charged.
FIRE gave the school an April 9 deadline to respond to its latest letter.
