Court Backs Censorship of High School Paper's Sex Cartoon

This from the School Law Blog:

A New York State school district was on solid legal ground when it barred a high school student newspaper from publishing a sexually explicit cartoon, a federal appeals court has ruled.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, in New York City, unanimously upheld the censorship of the cartoon depicting stick figures in various sexual positions.

Students involved with The Tattler, the student paper at Ithaca High School, sued the Ithaca, N.Y., school district alleging violations of First Amendment free speech rights, among other claims.

The incident stems from 2005, when the faculty adviser of The Tattler, a school-sponsored student newspaper, pulled the stick-figure cartoon and an accompanying article by a recent Ithaca High alumnus headlined, "Alumni Advice: Sex is Fun!" (The How Appealing web site has linked to this site containing documents from the case, with the cartoon on Page 18 of the PDF.)...

"We hold that defendants complied with the standards for regulation of speech in public schools set forth in Bethel School District Number 403 v. Fraser, which permits schools wide discretion to prohibit speech that is 'lewd, indecent, or offensive,' and Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier, which permits schools to censor school-sponsored speech in ways 'reasonably related to legitimate pedagogical concerns,'" Judge Jose A. Cabranes wrote for the court.

The stick-figure cartoon is "unquestionably lewd" and thus fell under Fraser, the judge said. And "the record clearly demonstrates that the paper was school-sponsored, or at least that its publication constituted an expressive activity that students, parents, and members of the public might reasonably perceive to bear the imprimatur of the school, which is sufficient to trigger the application of Hazelwood."

As for the school district's restriction on distributing the independent newspaper containing the cartoon, the court said it need not decide whether the publication would have been disruptive under U.S. Supreme Court's landmark student speech case, Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, because the censorship of lewd speech was lawful under Fraser.

Ill. school board approves prior review policy for student newspaper

This from the Student Press Law Center:

ILLINOIS — After three months of review, the Harrisburg, Ill. school board approved a prior review policy that gives Harrisburg High School Principal Karen Crank authority to review the student newspaper, the Purple Clarion, 48 hours before publication.

Harrisburg Community Unit #3 Board of Education member Judy Cape said there is not much change from the past policy and that she does not believe this is censorship.

"Hazelwood defines the standard of censorship for high school newspapers," Cape said. "It is my intent and expectation as a board member that the paper will be reviewed within those standards. These students still have First Amendment rights under Hazelwood."

Under Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier, high school administrators can censor many school-sponsored student publications if they can show they have a legitimate educational reason for doing so.

In addition to prior review, the new policy requires writers to sign all editorials and opinion articles. Purple Clarion adviser Cathy Wall voiced displeasure with the policy changes at the school board meeting and said that she does not agree with the idea of prior review of content by an administrator.

"Instead of teaching them (the students) to think freely and independently — to watch their government with a critical eye and speak out when something is amiss — we are teaching them to accept the role of government censorship because the principal is a government employee," Wall said in an e-mail...

In Hazelwood, the Court held 5-to-3 that the First Amendment did not require schools to affirmatively promote particular types of student speech. The Court held that schools must be able to set high standards for student speech disseminated under their auspices, and that schools retained the right to refuse to sponsor speech that was "inconsistent with 'the shared values of a civilized social order.'" Educators did not offend the First Amendment by exercising editorial control over the content of student speech so long as their actions were "reasonably related to legitimate pedagogical concerns."

Yonts bill seeks protections for high school newspapers

This from AP by way of KSBA:

Student journalists working for public high school newspapers would be entitled to free speech and freedom of the press protections similar to their professional counterparts under a proposal before the Kentucky House.

Students would be allowed to publish stories without interference from school administrators under Rep. Brent Yonts’ proposal. If the measure passes, Kentucky would join at least seven other states that have enacted some form of protections for high school journalists.

“It’s important for the future of journalism, that students are taught about the responsibilities of journalism,” said Josh Moore, a sophomore journalism student at Western Kentucky University, who’s pushing the legislation.

So far, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Massachusetts and Oregon have passed laws giving various levels of protection to student journalists who operate school newspapers.

The Illinois law does not include protections for high school journalists, said Frank LoMonte, executive director of the Student Press Law Center in Arlington, Va.

The bill is aimed at offsetting a 1988 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Hazelwood School District vs. Kuhlmeier, which ruled administrators in a St. Louis, Mo., school district could censor school newspaper articles, said Yonts, a Democrat from Greenville.

Protections under the bill would extend to young journalists regardless of whether their publications were school-funded or produced as part of a class. Local school boards would be required to adopt written freedom of expression policies for students....

Predictably, the bill is not being warmly embraced by the Kentucky School Boards Association whose members may lose some authority under the bill, but it does have its supporters. They are not surprising either. The Bowling Green Daily News opines,

...This bill has a lot of merit and sends a strong message that the First Amendment should not be tampered with in any way.

It sends a bad message to young Americans who are writing for their school papers to have their work censored by school principals. That message is that our constitutional freedoms are not that important.

David Greer, administrator of the Kentucky High School Journalism Association, said allowing school officials’ final say in what gets published could deter serious investigative journalism that is sometimes controversial.

We agree.

Young students who are interested in pursuing a career in journalism should have the freedom to publish the facts, regardless of whether it makes a school look good or bad.

The knowledge they gain while working for a high school paper will help prepare them about the journalism profession and all that it entails...

The "Bong hits 4 Jesus" case: Viewing Frederick's publicity stunt through Kuhlmeier's lens

Third year Yale Law student Murad Hussain outlines a possible defense in the Bonk Hits 4 Jesus case, using Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier. In Kuhlmeier, decided two years after Fraser, the Court rejected three students’ challenge to their principal’s censorship of the school newspaper. See the article in The Pocket Part, a companion to the Yale Law School Journal.

"The Court could interpret Frederick’s banner as speech in a publicly directed expressive activity of the kind that only Kuhlmeier has contemplated. Unlike the purely intra-school discourse in Tinker or Fraser, expressive activities such as plays and concerts are forums in which student speech is often managed for dissemination beyond the school. When schools sponsor such activities for the education and enjoyment of student participants and public audiences alike, the schools function not just as inwardly focused educational instruments but also as civic institutions engaging the citizens who support them.

...Instead of asking whether school resources aided production of speech, the Court should examine whether a student reached his chosen audience by participating in the school’s expressive activity. Under such an inquiry, a live event’s publicity and audience become dissemination-promoting resources. In Frederick, the school’s imprimatur on the rally enabled students to gather outside during class for a civic celebratory purpose. By giving students’ sentiments a public airing, the school generated publicity by creating a media-friendly backdrop for the torch relay. Without the school’s permission, students would not have been allowed outside, and Frederick may not have received his desired television audience even if he had cut class in order to stand all alone in front of the school. The rally could therefore be seen as facilitating the public dissemination of Frederick’s message to the passing cameras.

By viewing Frederick’s publicity stunt through Kuhlmeier’s lens, the Court could endorse the school’s decision to discipline Frederick while narrowly defining the context in which educators may regulate drug-themed speech. Although this would be a defeat for Frederick individually, such a ruling would not be the setback for First Amendment protections that an expansion of Fraser might. At the very least, it would be unfortunate if the Court broadly reshapes the contours of intra-school discourse with an idiosyncratic case in which the student was not trying to speak to anyone at school."