Sorry for such a long gap between blog posts. I’ve been on spring break for the past week, and what with grandparents visiting, interview prep, and homework, I haven’t had a lot of free time.
Today’s case, Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier, is especially relevant for high schoolers.
In 1983, journalism students at Hazelwood East High School were responsible for writing and editing the Spectrum, their school newspaper. Their principal, Robert Reynolds, found issue with two articles submitted for the spring issue. One was about divorce, and the other described pregnant teenagers’ experiences at Hazelwood. Although the girls’ names were changed to protect their privacy, Reynolds was still worried about their anonymity. He also thought the article’s references to birth control and pregnancy were unsuitable for younger readers. As a result, he struck these articles from the May 1983 issue.
These Hazelwood teenagers weren’t ninnies. They sued the school district in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, alleging that they had been deprived of their First Amendment right to free speech. The District Court decided that their rights had not been violated. However, the students successfully appealed to the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. Hazelwood School District then appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States, which granted certiorari in 1987.
Unfortunately for high school journalists, the Supreme Court held that students’ First Amendment rights are not violated when school districts prohibit the publication of ‘inappropriate’ articles. In other words, schools aren’t required to publish anything they feel uncomfortable with.
Justice Byron White wrote the majority opinion. In part two, he explained that public school students “do not shed their constitutional rights at the door,” but their rights aren’t necessarily comparable with “the rights of adults in other settings.” This means that schools can suppress speech that’s inconsistent with their basic educational mission. For example, the Court held in Fraser that a student could be disciplined for making sexually explicit remarks at a school assembly because vulgarity was inconsistent with the school’s fundamental values.
White then established that Spectrum was not an open public forum. Unlike streets, parks, and other traditional forums, the school newspaper wasn’t inherently used for discussion about public questions. School forums are only open if they allow for “indiscriminate use by the general public.” Hazelwood clearly didn’t meet this definition. The journalism class was part of its educational curriculum, as students received academic credit for their work.
Interestingly, Spectrum noted in its 1982 Statement of Policy that it “[accepted] all rights implied by the First Amendment.” But the Court didn’t take this literally. Examining the context, the Justices interpreted the statement as saying that the administration wouldn’t interfere with the 1A rights that attend to a school-sponsored publication. Hazelwood wasn’t establishing an open public forum.
Schools can also regulate students’ expressive activities if they’re supervised by faculty members and are designed to teach certain lessons or skills. As a consequence, teachers are given more leeway to ensure that these lessons are effectively taught and that “the views of the individual speaker are not erroneously attributed to the school.” This makes sense. The Spectrum supervisor was teaching students how to be responsible and ethical journalists, so he could withhold writing that was grammatically incorrect, poorly researched, biased, or unsuitable for younger audiences. Since his actions were related to “legitimate pedagogical concerns,” they didn’t violate the First Amendment.
Although the principal’s actions sound kind of stuffy, the Court found that they were wholly reasonable. Principal Reynolds credibly understood that the journalism II students were jeopardizing the pregnant teenagers’ privacy; after all, one teacher was able to identify all three of the ‘anonymous’ sources. Other students would probably be capable as well. Reynolds also found that the editors had violated basic journalistic principles in the divorce article, where a girl attacked her father for “always [arguing] about everything.” The father should have consented to these details being published, and at the very least, he should have been given the opportunity to respond. Therefore, the principal was justified in withholding these articles from the May 1983 issue.
What does this mean for today’s high school students? School officials can deem certain articles “inappropriate” and strike them from student publications.
(As soon as possible, I’ll update this article with Justice Brennan’s fascinating dissent.)
High School SCOTUS 