Censoring Student Newspapers: Overview

Introduction

Censorship is the suppression of information, opinion, or expression deemed offensive or inappropriate according to a specific value system. The First Amendment to the United States Constitution safeguards a set of civil liberties that includes freedom of speech and freedom of the press. One specific limit that has been placed on the amendment’s application concerns student newspapers, particularly at public high schools.

In 1988, the Supreme Court decision Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier allowed school administrators to censor student publications under certain conditions. However, that decision has been challenged by student journalists and has been mitigated in some states and school districts by concessions to greater student rights. The essence of the Supreme Court majority opinion is that the rights of adults as protected by the First Amendment have not yet been conferred upon school-age students. Furthermore, the rights of students must not interfere with the educational mission of schools.

Censorship opponents have challenged the decision by arguing that it not only violates First Amendment rights but also works against the spirit of inquiry and intellectual freedom that schools are supposed to encourage in their students. Censorship, some have contended, prevents students from debating controversial issues in an open forum and does not prepare them to graduate from school into life as an adult citizen, nor does it allow them to freely discuss the realities of teenage life. Some of those realities, which tend to be censored, are controversial in most public forums: abortion, contraception, pregnancy, sex, and drug use in a teenage context.

Understanding the Discussion

Civil liberties: Freedoms that protect citizens from the unlawful interference of government authority. The freedoms of speech, expression, and the press are three civil liberties considered vital to the citizenry of democratic societies.

First Amendment: The First Amendment of the US Constitution reads: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” It has been used as the major reference point for cases involving censorship in the US.

Lewd: Obscene, with a sexual connotation.

Obscene: Indecent; offensive; often applied to language or images that violate a culture’s taboos.

History

In 1969, the Supreme Court reached a landmark decision protecting student rights in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District. The case was based on an incident at an Iowa high school in which students wore black armbands to protest the war in Vietnam and were forbidden from attending school if they did not remove the armbands. The Supreme Court decided that the students’ First Amendment rights had been violated, stating that the students had the right to free expression as long as they did not substantially disrupt the educational process or infringe on the rights of other students. The dissenting opinion stated that the court’s decision would encourage greater permissiveness in American society and more frequent challenges to authority. Though the Tinker case did not specifically mention the censorship of school newspapers, it has often been invoked as a guideline in such cases.

The Tinker case set several important precedents. First, the decision meant that students did not cease to be protected by the First Amendment because they were minors or because they were exercising their rights at a public school. Second, it placed the burden of proof on school administrators to demonstrate that an act of expression disrupts the educational process, lacks educational value, or interferes with the rights of other students.

In 1986, in Bethel School District No. 403 v. Fraser, the Supreme Court decided that schools could limit student speech without violating their constitutional rights. The case was based on an incident involving a high school student who used sexual innuendo in a school-sponsored campaign speech and was suspended for having been lewd and causing offense. The decision also stated that schools had the obligation to teach values such as socially appropriate behavior. Though the case was concerned with the freedom of speech rather than of the press, it has been frequently referenced in censorship cases.

A more specific case was decided by the Supreme Court in 1988 in Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier. It was based on a 1983 incident that occurred at a high school in Missouri. The principal, in reviewing the student newspaper before publication, decided that two articles were inappropriate. The articles focused on teenage pregnancy and the effects that divorce has on students. The principal told the journalism advisor that the articles would have to be removed prior to printing, even though both articles described the experiences of anonymous students at the high school.

Several students, invoking the First Amendment and its extension to the free expression of students at public schools (as decided in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District), filed a lawsuit against the Hazelwood School District after the articles were removed. Eventually the case reached the Supreme Court, which decided that school administrators had editorial control over student newspapers and had the right to exercise it. Such censorship, according to the decision, was not a violation of the students’ First Amendment rights.

The rationale behind the decision was multilayered. First, students do not have the same rights guaranteed to adults, based on their minority status as well as the fact that they are in a public institution, which must—above everything else—fulfill an educational mission. Second, the Court found that schools are not public forums and therefore the First Amendment does not fully apply to their environment. Third, since school newspapers are not distinct from a school’s educational mission, school administrators have the right and the responsibility to decide the content of the newspapers, just as they decide the content of the curriculum. The US Constitution does not give students the right to control the public school system, the Court stated.

The effect of the decision was to give school administrators the right to censor material they deemed to be of no educational value. The court argued that it was, in the future, the right of school administrators, rather than federal courts, to have the final decision regarding censorship issues.

The dissenting opinion argued that the decision violated the students’ First Amendment rights and, more importantly, contradicted the mission of an educational institution in a democratic country. That is, a school’s mission is to teach the fundamental values of the wider society, and one of those values is the exercise of civil liberties. Furthermore, it was argued, the decision left the guidelines for censorship too vague and thus gave school administrations too much power. Furthermore, the dissenters noted that simply causing offense should not be a standard for censoring if the material is of educational value.

However, the ruling did not clarify whether it applied to college as well as high school newspapers, and subsequent federal court rulings have been divided on the issue.

Censoring Student Newspapers Today

Organizations that represent students with censorship claims include the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Student Press Law Center. Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier holds sway in most school districts but has been challenged by students and other free speech advocates. Some states have adopted laws applying to student publications. Those laws mitigate the impact of the 1988 decision and grant students broader rights. In 2023, according to the Student Press Law Center, West Virginia became the seventeenth state to sign this type of legislation, while several other states introduced similar bills seeking to protect student press freedom.

However, the Student Press Law Center has also noted that incidents of censorship have continued to be reported across the United States. By the 2020s, students and advocates of freedom of press were still expressing concern that instances of retribution, including against the advisers of school papers, as well as losses in funding were increasing levels of self-censorship. Even after a principal in Burlington, Vermont, in 2018 was compelled to change course from trying to get students to take down a story that had involved an investigation into a school guidance counselor's misconduct due to protests revolving around the state's law protecting student journalists, other cases continued to become known in which stories inspired by the #MeToo movement were often facing censorship by school administrators. In November 2019, the students on the Burlington High School newspaper's staff who helped to write and investigate the story as well as protest its censorship were given the Courage in Student Journalism Award sponsored by the Student Press Law Center, the Center for Scholastic Journalism at Kent State University, and the National Scholastic Press Association.

Another case that drew national attention to the issue of the censorship of student newspapers occurred in 2022. By that point, students at many different schools had increasingly covered topics such as the COVID-19 pandemic, LGBTQ issues, and politics that some perceived as controversial. That year, advocates of student press freedom, citing the act as a form of retaliation, criticized a Nebraska school administration for shuttering the institution's long-running student newspaper while bringing its journalism course to an end after the publication had run stories about LGBTQ issues. Meanwhile, other proponents continued to highlight cases in which students investigating stories for their school papers had uncovered truths regarding significant issues such as authority misconduct and effected change in their communities.

The issue of censorship in school publications, despite the Hazelwood precedent, reveals a larger issue at the heart of the American educational system. Parents, professional educators, and politicians are often divided over the main goal of education, with all sides questioning what values should be taught. Others argue that students should learn critical thinking rather than cultural values. This latter argument has been asserted in support of students’ civil liberties. In the particularly polarized political climate of the 2020s, dispute over censorship in public schools was considered likely to continue.

These essays and any opinions, information or representations contained therein are the creation of the particular author and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of EBSCO Information Services.

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