Costanza v. Wambsgans
73 U. Va 19 (2021)
Justice Berdan delivered the opinion of the Court.
Facts
Today, this august court confronts a paradigmatically UVA sort of question, to wit: what are the demands of collegiality when faced with an absolutely stellar opportunity to flex on everybody?
Appellants, a group of as yet unemployed 2Ls, sought injunctive relief and punitive damages against the respondent class, comprising all 2Ls who have submitted summer-job announcement posts to LinkedIn containing any of the following phrases, or variants of them:
● “I am extremely excited to announce”
● “I am humbled and thrilled to announce”
● “I am elated and flabbergasted to share the news”
● “I am borderline orgasmic to announce”
For example, as we read in the compendium of posts provided by appellants at trial, 2L Chad Brotherton wrote on February 11th, 2021, “I am extremely way thrilled and excited to announce that I will be absolutely crushing it this summer for the New York office of Paid, Sachsocash, and Souldrainer, LLP.” This post circulated not only to Mr. Brotherton’s LinkedIn friends (connections? What’s it called? Does anyone know how to actually use LinkedIn?), but also to secondary and tertiary connections, as friends “liked” Mr. Brotherton’s post, and the “likes” showed up on their friends’ feeds. Appellants portray these layers of announcements from friends, foes, and randos as a veritable deluge of cringy announcements any time LinkedIn is accessed.
It is important to keep in mind the context of these announcements. The law school is enduring, along with the rest of the world (with the apparent exception of Texas, North Korea, and UVA’s fraternities and sororities), during the ongoing pandemic. School continues to be conducted mostly online, students are isolated and starved for social attention, and the job market is suffering. Appellants note that some of the posts in question graciously acknowledge all these things, particularly the poster’s sensitivity to the fact that many of their peers remain jobless, before announcing their breathless excitement to “Not be one of those jobless chumpsicles.”
As of the date of this opinion, the relevant posts by UVA Law students number in the tens of thousands. Peculiarly, many of the appellants have, since the time of the lower court trial, been offered and accepted jobs for this summer, and immediately written LinkedIn posts about it. This undermines their standing in the case, and creates a conflict of interest, as they are now members of the respondent class. Only a handful of the original plaintiffs remain.
Analysis
There are three appropriate analogs for the types of posts at issue here. See, e.g. Gunners v. Gunners, 231 U.Va. 172 (2002); Normi v. Tryhard, 31 U.Va. 111 (2000); Trump v. UVA Law Vets, 44 U.Va. 101 (1968). In each of these cases, this court upheld students’ rights to flex on everybody, citing several fundamental ideals that have been long-cherished by UVA Law as an institution and its student body. I will consider each of them in turn.
In Gunners, new Law Review members were making the announcement in one of three ways: (1) adding the VLR Myspace page to their Top 8, (2) making the VLR theme song their profile song using their sweet HTML skills, or (3) clumsily alluding to it in an unrelated question in a survey they posted in a bulletin.[1] The court held that all these uses were “...within the bounds of collegiality, since bragging about doing unpaid labor for overpaid professors, in exchange for a gold star on your resume, was just as likely to inspire eyerolls as admiration.”
In Tryhard, a collection of recent alumni filed suit against graduating 3Ls who posted on the social media site Livejournal about their induction into The Order of the Coif.™ The alumni alleged extreme emotional distress and sought pecuniary damages, since the Livejournal posts were read by the alumni’s employers, significant others, and children, who promptly fired them, abandoned them, and asked to be emancipated, respectively. These futureless, lonely, barren alumni were promptly laughed out of the courtroom, since they no longer had standing, given that they were in disbarment proceedings.
In Trump v. Vets, the court confronted the complaints of none other than Future-Former President Donald J. Trump, then a student at Wharton School of Business. Trump filed suit against both the Law Vets and the admissions department, alleging that the admissions office unfairly discriminated against draft dodgers like himself, instead admitting students who brought up their status as veterans on every single page of their law school application. Trump argued that his bone spur stories, combined with a handsome donation from his father to the Federalist Society at UVA, should have been enough to secure him admission and passage through all his classes. After all, it was apparently enough for Wharton. The court found against Mr. Trump’s allegations of discrimination, noting that UVA had on many, many, many occasions admitted plenty of awful people with too much money, but Mr. Trump had been denied admission primarily because he wrote his application in all caps, in Sharpie. The Law Vets’ perhaps heavy-handed leveraging of their military service was explicitly supported by the court as well, with the presiding judge holding that “If you fought it, flaunt it.”
These three cases leave little daylight to condemn the employed students’ LinkedIn posts. Bragging, posturing, and insincere declarations of gratitude are all part and parcel of the LinkedIn community. To believe you can go on Linkedin without being doused with corporate showboating is a nonsensical fantasy that ignores all evidence, much like believing that FedSoc is a nonpartisan debate organization. Law students themselves are famous for animalistic lust for prestige, and this finds a ready platform for expression on LinkedIn. The noted collegiality of UVA Law students in particular doesn’t mean they won’t brag about their progress in climbing the corporate ladder. They just typically try to avoid stomping on any fingers.
The judgment of the lower court is affirmed.
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mwb4k@virginia.edu
[1] They were called bulletins! Blast from the past, right?