EUGENE VOLOKH: Proposed Virginia Criminal Ban on “Bullying”.

While the definition of “bullying” in the statute is drawn from a statute that is targeted at schoolchildren, nothing in the definition itself is limited to such children. And the statute that Del. Keam’s proposal would modify applies to everyone, not just adults. So it may well be that the proposal, if enacted, would also apply to speech about adults. If someone harshly criticizes — on a blog, or on one’s facebook page, or in a newspaper article posted online — a businessperson, a low-level government official, an academic, or anyone else in a way that is seen as “inten[ded] to … harass” and “humiliate,” is “repeated over time,” and “involves a real or perceived power imbalance between the aggressor or aggressors,” that too would be a crime.

This strikes me as unconstitutionally overbroad (even if limited to speech about schoolchildren), and extraordinarily vague.