Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier

Brad Palmer

Censorship

What is Censorship?

When is Censorship appropriate?

Where have you seen censorship?

Public Forum of Expression and your First Amendment Rights

What makes the Hoofprint a Public Forum of Expression?

“Students in the public schools do not ‘shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate." Tinker v. Des Moines School District, 1969. Unless school authorities have reason to believe that such expression will substantially interfere with the work of the school or impinge upon the rights of other students."

The “Spectrum”

• Was a three page student paper run by the advisor.

• Unlike the Hoofprint the advisor not the editors decided what stories went into each issue.

• The Spectrum was considerably smaller than the Hoofprint only about 25 people worked on every issue while throughout the year the Hoofprint has over 200 students working on it.

Case Details

• Student run “Spectrum” was defined not to be a Public Forum of Expression.

• Two stories were taken out of the upcoming issue, Teens with Divorced Parents and Teen Pregnancy.

• The students in the stories were anonymous, but could be easily identified.

• The administrator censored both stories leaving the paper without it’s two largest articles for that issue.

Court’s Ruling• The District Court sided with the school saying that the stories would harm

the learning environment and disrupt the learning process.

• The paper appealed the decision to the District Court of appeals where the decision was reversed as the court agreed with the paper saying that the school had overstepped its power in censoring the stories.

• Again the decision was appealed, this time to the Federal Supreme Court in 1987 where the majority of the justices agreed with the previous ruling of the District Court.

“The first amendment rights of students in the public schools are not automatically coextensive with the rights of adults in other settings, and must be applied in light of the special characteristics of the school environment.” Justice White said in his consenting opinion.

How it affects you

• In many ways it doesn’t. The majority of all stories aren’t effected by the ruling. It does however change the way you write. Now every issue is up for review and can be censored by an administrator.