Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act

Cyberbullying is the deliberate use of electronic communication to harass, intimidate, embarrass or demean others. While many schools have taken initiative to devise their own policies against bullying, and some forward-thinking schools specifically include the topic of cyberbullying within their policies, transgressions related to bullying have yet to be defined as crimes punishable through the law enforcement community.

In 2008, however, Representatives Linda Sanchez (D-CA) and Kenny Hulshof (R-MO) introduced the Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act. If passed, cyberbullying would be a federal offense, so that any person to "transmit in interstate or foreign commerce any communication, with the intent to coerce, intimidate, harass or cause substantial emotional distress to a person, using electronic means to support severe, repeated, and hostile behavior, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both."

The bill became introduced to Congress after the tragic suicide of a 13 year-old girl, Megan Meier, from Missouri. Over the social networking site MySpace, Meier was befriended and romanced online by a boy named Josh Evans, who later cruelly rejected her in an act that directly influenced Meier to hang herself in her bedroom. "Josh Evans" was later discovered to be a neighbor and mother of a former friend, along with a handful of co-conspirators, who falsely created the MySpace account for the sole purpose of duping the young teenager. With no law against cyberbullying in existence, Meier's offender was found in violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, a law against hacking, because she used a protected computer to obtain information that caused emotional distress.