Cheerleader at the center of Supreme Court free speech case says she felt 'isolated' when her school punished her for cursing on Snapchat

• Brandi Levy was suspended from the cheerleading team after cursing in a Snapchat about not making varsity.
• She sued, and it's now the most important Supreme Court case around student free speech in decades.
• "I couldn't express how I felt without getting in trouble," Levy told Insider of her feelings at the time.

In May 2017, Brandi Levy, a ninth-grader at Mahanoy Area High School in Pennsylvania, sent a heated Snapchat message that would later land her before the Supreme Court.

Frustrated that she didn't make her school's varsity cheerleading team, she took a selfie with a friend and posted it to Snapchat with the caption, "f--- school, f--- softball, f--- cheer, f--- everything."

Levy's coaches suspended her from the squad for a year, citing team rules against foul language and inappropriate gestures as well as putting negative information about cheerleading and her coaches on the internet, according to The Washington Post.

"When the school did that, I kind of felt isolated," Levy, now 18 years old, said in an interview with Insider. "I couldn't say anything without getting yelled at or getting in trouble for doing it. I felt like I couldn't express how I felt without getting in trouble."

The school didn't budge when Levy and her parents fought the district, trying to get them to reverse their decision. So Levy sued, and the profanity-laden Snapchat is now the basis for the most important free speech case for students in a half-century.

"I feel like other people wouldn't go this far," she said of her case. "I mean, I didn't expect it to go this far."

The Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case Wednesday. Witold "Vic" Walczak, the legal director of the Pennsylvania ACLU, which is representing Levy, told Insider that the court's decision will have consequences for the 50 million public school students in the United States.

According to existing legal standards, Walczak said, schools regulate student speech depending on how "disruptive" it is. But Walczak said that standard is far too broad, effectively allowing schools to punish students for any controversial speech - a particular problem when anyone can post anything on social media at any time.

"Just to use examples on the politics of the school district, if you wear a T-shirt with a Confederate flag, it could be deemed disruptive," Walczak said. "In a different school district, saying 'black lives matter' is disruptive. So it would allow schools to regulate students' political, religious, ideological speech, which is really dangerous."

The US Justice Department is standing against Levy and the ACLU. In Supreme Court briefs, it has cautioned against stripping away the ability for schools to regulate online bullying and harassment against students.

Walczak said schools should be able to address student bullying, but they need to do it in a way that doesn't infringe against students' free speech.

"The way government has done that, we think is just too clumsy and would give schools too much authority to be able to restrict political, religious, controversial speech or anything that's critical of the school," Walczak said. "That just goes too far in terms of restricting students' free speech rights."

While the four-year journey to the Supreme Court has galvanized Levy, now a college freshman, she said it hasn't given her an appetite for practicing law.

"I'm not interested in doing any of this lawyer stuff," she said. "It looks stressful. It looks really stressful. I think I'm going to stick with accounting."