Stacy Snyder, a federal court has ruled, won't be teaching kids the three Arrrrs any time soon: They've rejected Snyder's claim that her First Amendment rights were violated when a MySpace photo showing her engaged in a bit of boozy buccaneering, as well as posts complaining about her relationship with a supervisor, cost the former Millersville University student a teaching degree.

In 2006, Snyder had been a student teacher at Conestoga Valley High School in Pennsylvania, as required by both Millersville's teaching curriculum and the state's teacher certification guidelines. Her performance reviews often complained of Snyder's lack of professionalism—and her shaky grasp of the subject matter she had been assigned to teach.

But the final straw for the school came when they saw that Snyder's MySpace account—which she had mentioned to students on several occasions—contained a photo of the grog-swilling Snyder in a pirate hat, captioned "drunken pirate," as well as posts alluding to her fraught relationship with her supervisor. They called Snyder at home and told her to walk the plank out of their student teaching program. Since she'd failed to complete her student teaching practicum, Millersville denied Snyder a teaching degree, instead shuffling some credits around to award her a BA in English.

Snyder took the school to court, and while judge Paul Diamond of the District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania promptly dismissed her due process claims, as well as several statutory claims, he allowed her to press the argument that the denial had violated her First Amendment right to free expression.

On Wednesday, however, the judge tossed that claim as well. Snyder, Diamond found, "was an apprentice more akin to a public employee/teacher than a student" during her time at CV High. As such, the First Amendment protects her speech about matters of "public concern"—she couldn't be barred from the student-teaching program for expressing an unpopular political opinion—but not personal MySpace postings the school found to be unprofessional. Moreover, once the school had declined to certify her completion of the program, Millersville administrators had no authority to override the degree requirements to award Snyder a teaching diploma.

A warning to prospective public employees, then: it may be that on the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog. But they are apt to find out if you're a drunken pirate.