Disappointing news from U.S. Supreme Court
Just receive from Marc Goodman, executive director at the
Student Law Press Center:
He reports that the U.S. Supreme Court has announced this morning that
it will not hear a case that questioned the authority of administrators
at an Illinois university to censor a student newspaper that published
articles critical of the school.
The Court's ruling lets
stand a June 2005 decision by the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
that could open the door to providing university administrators with
authority to censor school-sponsored speech by public college students
and faculty, including speech in some student newspapers, at schools in
Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin.
The appeals court ruled that the Supreme Court's 1988 decision in Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier
,
which has been used to restrict the First Amendment rights of
elementary and high school students and teachers, applied to colleges
and universities as well. The appeals court decision was in stark
contrast to over three decades of law that has provided strong free
speech protection to college student journalists and protected them
from censorship by school officials unhappy with what student media
published.
By refusing to hear the case, the Court lets stand
the extension to colleges of a censorship standard it created to
oversee speech by students as young as five years old. The 7th
Circuit's decision is only binding in three states and is in direct
conflict with decisions of other state and federal courts around the
country.
Today's ruling disappointed student press advocates.
"The
appeals court decision last year turned on its head the traditional
belief that a university is a 'marketplace of ideas' where speech from
all sides is not only tolerated, but encouraged. We hoped that the
Supreme Court would step in to reaffirm that important principle," said
Mark Goodman, executive director of the Student Press Law Center. "We
are very disappointed that the Court left that issue to be decided
another day."