Does the First Amendment protect a student who fabricates a raunchy profile about his high school principal and posts it on the Internet?

That question is before a federal judge, who has to decide whether administrators of the Hermitage School District were justified or vindictive when they suspended Justin Layshock for 10 days.

Mr. Layshock was off campus, using his grandmother's computer, when he created the Internet profile that made fun of his principal, Eric Trosch. Even so, Hermitage administrators say, they had the right to punish him because his writings caused disruption at school and defamed Mr. Trosch.

Portions of depositions were made public last week as lawyers on each side asked District Judge Terrence McVerry, of Pittsburgh, to issue a summary judgment in their favor.

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Mr. Layshock and his parents are seeking monetary damages and a finding that the district's punishment of him violated his right of free speech. The district wants the lawsuit dismissed.

Mr. Layshock was a 17-year-old senior in December 2005 when he created a phony profile of Mr. Trosch, then principal of Hickory High School in Mercer County.

After lifting a copy of the principal's photograph from the school district's Web site, Mr. Layshock fabricated information about Mr. Trosch and published it on MySpace.com.

Much of the parody focused on the principal's physical bulk, but it also used the terms "big faggot" and "big steroid freak" to describe him. The district says these offensive terms are not protected free speech because they are defamatory.

Mr. Layshock, now a freshman at St. John's University, said what he did was a spoof, and an obvious one at that.

One of his attorneys, Witold Walczak, of the American Civil Liberties Union, likened the case to a Hustler magazine cartoon that lampooned the Rev. Jerry Falwell. Mr. Falwell sued the magazine for libel and lost.

Because Mr. Layshock created the profile of Mr. Trosch on his own time and on a home computer, he said, his conduct was not a school matter. Like every citizen, he said in his lawsuit, he has a right of free speech.

But Mr. Trosch saw the case as one in which an insolent teenager degraded him and broke the law. He asked Hermitage police officers to file harassment charges against Mr. Layshock because of his posting. They declined.

At school, Mr. Trosch and fellow administrators moved against Mr. Layshock. In addition to suspending him for 10 days, they placed him in an alternative education program that isolated him from the general high school population.

Mr. Layshock said administrators of the Hermitage School District violated confidentiality laws when they sent word of his suspension to Penn State University, where he had applied for admission. Penn State put his application on hold, pending an investigation.

As it turned out, he was accepted at St. John's, his first choice for college, so the snag in his application to Penn State did not matter.

Mr. Trosch said in his deposition that he cried when he talked to colleagues about the Internet profile that made fun of him. He said his daughter, a high school freshman at the time, learned of the parody from friends and was disturbed by it.

"It's degrading. It's demeaning. It's shocking," he said.

Pressed by Mr. Layshock's attorney as to what shocked him, Mr. Trosch said: "It's shocking when a profile was forged about you."

Two other profiles of Mr. Trosch were created and posted on MySpace.com by people other than Mr. Layshock. The others who lanced the principal probably were students, but their identities went undetected.

Only Mr. Layshock owned up to what he did. He apologized to Mr. Trosch for offending him. But positions hardened after administrators suspended Mr. Layshock and banished him to the alternative school.

Mr. Trosch succeeded in getting MySpace.com to delete the mock profiles. He called a special meeting of some 50 teachers to discuss the Internet attacks on him. He said he became so emotional he had to leave his own meeting.

Soon after, Mr. Trosch temporarily shut down school computers. "We have a responsibility to protect our students from any offensive, obscene, vulgar, threatening profiles that could be out there," he said in his deposition.

One reason the district gave for Mr. Layshock's suspension was that he had disrupted school by spoofing Mr. Trosch on the Internet.

But Mr. Layshock's attorneys said there was no disruption of school life until the principal overreacted by calling staff meetings and locking down computers.

Nothing written by Mr. Layshock caused commotion, nor were his writings threatening or obscene, said Mr. Walczak, legal director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania.

In his deposition, Mr. Trosch agreed that the parody contained no threats. But he said it was hurtful and disrespectful.

Anthony Sanchez, an attorney for the school district, said Mr. Layshock's parody contained "fighting words" that are not protected by the First Amendment.

He said Mr. Layshock made libelous and obscene attacks on the principal. In one line of the profile, Mr. Layshock wrote that Mr. Trosch used "a big blunt," a reference to smoking marijuana.

Mr. Layshock's parents, Donald and Cheryl, joined him in the lawsuit, saying the district was wrong to punish their son for constitutionally protected speech made at home. The Layshocks have three younger children in Hermitage schools and are worried about the district's trying to regulate off-campus speech, Mr. Walczak said.