Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier
Issues: Censorship, Student Press Rights
Background:
- The journalism class at Hazelwood East High School wrote articles and put them together for the school paper. They gave the newspaper to their teacher, Howard Emerson. Mr. Emerson showed the newspaper to the principal. He asked the principal if it was okay to make copies and hand them out to students at the school.
- Principal Reynolds did not like what he read. First, there was an article about pregnant students. It described the students, but it did not give their names. Principal Reynolds was afraid that students would be able to figure out who the pregnant students were. He also noticed that the article mentioned sex and birth control. He did not think that students in ninth grade should be reading about sex and birth control.
- There was another article that Principal Reynolds did not like. This one talked about divorce. In it, one student said things about her father. For example, she said that her father went out too much. She also said that her father didn't spend enough time with his family. The father did not get a chance to tell his side of the story. Principal Reynolds thought this was unfair.
- Principal Reynolds thought the paper needed to be changed. But it was almost the end of the school year. He was afraid that it would take the class a long time to change it. If it took too long, the school year would be over and the other students would not get the paper. So he told Mr. Emerson to remove the pages that had the articles about pregnancy and divorce. He said to make copies of the rest of the paper.
- The students were very angry. They had spent a lot of time writing the articles. They could have fixed them if Principal Reynolds had given them a chance. Instead, he deleted two pages that also contained other articles. They felt that this was a violation of their First Amendment rights. They went to the U.S. District Court. The court did not agree with them. It said that school officials may limit students' speech in the school newspaper if their decision has "a substantial and reasonable basis." In other words, if he has a good reason, it is okay for a principal to limit students' speech.
- The students appealed the decision. The Court of Appeals reversed the decision of the U.S. District Court. This court said that the school paper was a "public forum," or place where students could express their views. The judges said that the school could not censor the paper except "to avoid . . . substantial interference with school work or discipline . . . or the rights of others." They did not think that the articles about pregnancy would have interfered with schoolwork. They thought the articles should have been printed.
- The school appealed the decision of the Court of Appeals. The Supreme Court of the United States thought that this was an important case. It dealt with the rights of students. It agreed to hear arguments from both sides.
- The Supreme Court ruled against the students in a 5-3 decision. Justice White wrote the majority opinion, concluding that the First Amendment does not prevent school officials from exercising reasonable authority over the content of school-sponsored publications. Justice Brennan wrote a dissenting opinion, which was joined by Justices Marshall and Blackmun.
- The majority opinion first considered whether school-sponsored student newspapers are public forums. If they were public forums, school officials would not be allowed to exercise editorial control over the content of the paper. Referring to Supreme Court precedent, the decision noted that school facilities are only considered to be public forums when school authorities have “’by policy or by practice’ opened those facilities ‘for indiscriminate use by the general public.’” If the facilities are used for other purposes, however, they do not constitute a public forum, and “school officials may impose reasonable restrictions on the speech of students.” The school newspaper in this case was not open to the unlimited contribution of students, teachers and other members of the community, but was instead published as part of the curriculum of a journalism class. Therefore, its primary function was for educational purposes, and the newspaper did not constitute a public forum.
- The Court then addressed the question of whether the First Amendment “requires a school affirmatively to promote particular student speech.” They concluded that it does not. The First Amendment rights of students in public schools are not necessarily equal to those of adults outside of schools. “A school need not tolerate student speech that is inconsistent with its ‘basic educational mission, even though the government could not censor similar speech outside the school.”
- The Court decided that the issues involved in this case differ from those the Court ruled on in Tinker v. Des Moines. In that case, the Court questioned whether school officials could “silence a student’s personal expression that happens to occur on the school premises.” Hazelwood, however, forced the Court to consider the extent of school officials’ control over “school-sponsored publications … and other expressive activities that students, parents, and members of the public might reasonably perceive to bear the [approval] of the school.” Tinker asked whether schools must tolerate certain student speech, while this case questioned whether schools must endorse student speech.
- The Supreme Court concluded that the First Amendment does not force schools to endorse student speech in their school-sponsored publications. School officials have authority and control over these publications in order to ensure that “participants learn whatever lessons the activity is designed to teach, that readers or listeners are not exposed to material that may be inappropriate for their level of maturity, and that the views of the individual speaker are not erroneously attributed to the school.” Therefore, as long as the editorial control of school officials was “reasonably related to legitimate pedagogical concerns” such as those mentioned above, it did not offend the First Amendment.
- Justice Brennan disagreed. In his dissenting opinion, Brennan acknowledged that inside public schools, students’ rights are not necessarily equal to those they enjoy outside of school, but he also argued that as the Court said in Tinker, “students in the public schools do not ‘shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.’” There must be a balance struck between the free expression rights of students and the interests of schools officials in maintaining order and discipline, he declared, and that balance was already struck in Tinker. School officials must refrain from interfering with student speech unless it causes a “material and substantial disruption.” Justice Brennan concluded that the Tinker standard should have been applied in this case, and that the Court should have ruled in favor of the students because “public educators must accommodate some student expression even if it offends them or offers views or values that contradict those the schools wishes to inculcate.”
Case # & Citation:
- Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier, 367 U.S. 643 (1988)
- Landmark Cases of the U.S. Supreme Court. (n.d.). Retrieved June 15, 2015, from http://www.streetlaw.org/en/landmark/cases/hazelwood_v_kuhlmeier