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Free-Speech Rights of College Newspapers Contested
A federal appeals court in Chicago will rehear a case dealing with whether administrators are entitled to approve the content of college student newspapers. The case, Hosty v. Carter, was brought by student journalists at Governors State University in Illinois in January 2001 after a dean, Patricia Carter, told the newspaper's printer to hold future issues of the paper until they were approved by a college administrator. The paper had published news stories and editorials critical of the administration.
The student journalists argued that Carter's action violated their First Amendment rights and a university policy that newspaper staff "will determine content and format of their respective publications without censorship or advance approval." The state's attorney general is asking the court to use this case to extend to public college student media the Supreme Court's decision in Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier, a 1988 case that limited the First Amendment protection available to school-sponsored student publications in high schools.
A three-judge panel of the appeals court ruled in April that Hazelwood was not the appropriate standard for college student newspapers, but that ruling was nullified by the decision to rehear the case. In the rehearing, the full court will also again consider whether Carter is protected from the lawsuit under qualified immunity, which protects government officials from lawsuits when their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have been aware.
In a separate development, administrators and student newspaper editors at Hampton University in Virginia agreed to form a task force on the student newspaper after an incident in which administrators confiscated all copies of the newspaper because editors would not print on the front page a letter from the university's acting president. The letter, a response to a story about health-code violations at the university's cafeteria, was printed on page three. The task force, which will make binding recommendations about the amount of control that Hampton administrators will have over the newspaper, will consist of student editors, professional journalists, faculty members, and an administrator.
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