A Minnesota student has won a landmark legal battle against the school that forced her to handover passwords to her social media and email accounts after she posted messages critical of the school on her Facebook page.

The Minnewaska School District has agreed to pay a significant $70,000 settlement to sixth grader Riley Stratton, who was just 13 years old at the time of the incident.

Despite the fact that Stratton did not use a school computer to write the post, she received a detention and was ordered to write a letter of apology to the teaching assistant she had criticized. Some days later, a parent complained to school officials that they had found their son exchanging sexually explicit conversations with Stratton in private Facebook messages. The flat out weirdness of the parents taking a matter like this to school officials aside, the schools reaction was even worse.

In a case of extraordinary over reach, instead of referring the matter to Stratton’s parents for discussion – the school hauled Stratton in for interrogation. With a Deputy Sheriff standing over her, school officials demanded the 13-year-old hand over her passwords. When she complained, they began scanning through her Facebook account right in front of her.

“They interrogated me and told me to give them my password,” she said. “I didn’t want detention, so I had to give them this.” “I was in tears…I was embarrassed when they made me give over my password.”