Sara Haines Dings SCOTUS Cheerleader Ruling: Free Speech Shouldn't Include 'Language Like This'

On Friday morning, The View co-host Sara Haines found herself alone in a corner with Justice Clarence Thomas, the lone dissenting vote in a Supreme Court ruling that held up a high school cheerleader's right to curse online. Like Thomas, Haines disagreed with the ruling, and she argued that the teen violated her team's "Code of Conduct" and thus deserved to be suspended for posting a profanity-laced caption on Snapchat. "My parents never would have defended anything I did when behavior included language like this," she said. "It's a reflection of your parents, your schools, and everything else."

"I don't really love this ruling," said Haines, at the top of her monologue. "Normally I'm all about freedom of speech, but my issue is, as a student, when you are on teams — whether it was cheerleading, band, or basketball — we had to sign certain Codes of Conduct. And I think this student did as well, but this was overruled."

Haines said that these Codes of Conduct serve as a reminder that students "reflect the team you're on, the coach that's there, the teacher, the school, the principal," and "using that language" violates that agreement. "As the dissenting Justice Clarence Thomas said, one of his concerns was with social media, it has the ability to reach more people faster," she said. "This wasn't just to a friend on the phone. This goes out and a lot of people see it."

"We also want to see rhetoric elevated right now, and it starts with these kids," she continued (with absolutely zero acknowledgement of the fact that kids are kids and not senators that need to "elevate" their rhetoric). "We're also preparing them for the real world. In this day and age, we're seeing people lose jobs over social media posts. So, if we're going to cushion them when they're young on the training grounds of lower education, what are they going to get when they get into the real world?"

SCOTUS UPHOLDS CHEERLEADER'S FREE SPEECH: After the Supreme Court ruled a Pennsylvania school violated a student's First Amendment rights when they punished her over a vulgar Snapchat video, the co-hosts discuss. https://t.co/LAf3bwTdNx pic.twitter.com/RdzeYyYnOR

— The View (@TheView) June 25, 2021

Joy Behar and Ana Navarro basically ignored Haines' bizarre "kids need to act like adults" monologue, but McCain did address it a few minutes later. "I agree with what Sara said that we can't coddle kids and make it seem like when they go out into the real world that there won't be ramifications for what they do and say," said the conservative co-host. "That being said ... all of the internet is just people raging at each other. So to pick out this one dumb teenager, who I'm sure is very embarrassed at this point and won't do it again — I'm just sick of holding teenagers at the standard that we hold commentators and people in public life."

People are talking about The View in our forums. Join the conversation.

Claire Spellberg Lustig is the Senior Editor at Primetimer and a scholar of The View. Follow her on Twitter at @c_spellberg.