In Re Nickolas S. — Pelander, J., Concurring

Summary

Justice Pelander concurred in the court’s narrow resolution that Niekolas’s words were not inherently likely to provoke a violent reaction by the teacher. He emphasized that the opinion did not decide whether the statute’s constitutionality should be analyzed under the fighting-words doctrine or whether the statute reaches only fighting words. He additionally expressed the view that the student had no First Amendment right to make the profanity-laced classroom outburst and that the conduct constituted statutory abuse. Because this is a concurrence, these additional views are not holdings of the court.