Dive Brief:
- A bill passed by the Illinois House and Senate, now awaiting Gov. Bruce Rauner's signature, would give high school student journalists greater protections, along with the teachers who support them.
- HuffPost Education reports the bill defines a legally protected right of students to choose their own news and content for high school publications, whether the school administration approves or not, and it protects faculty from retaliation or dismissal for protecting student journalists.
- California, North Dakota and Maryland have similar protections, all of which limit censorship abilities of administrators that the Supreme Court condoned in Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier in 1988.
Dive Insight:
Students who have strong beliefs that do not match those of administrators have been targets of censorship in school publications across the country. As these students are learning about freedom of the press and the first amendment in history classes, they run up against a denial of these rights because of their age and their school enrollment. Teachers, in these cases, are put in difficult positions, being asked to pick sides and risk real consequences for it. The Student Press Law Center calls the Illinois law one of the strongest in the country.
Administrators facing limited control over student publications might be tempted to shut down school press operations entirely. That’s not always a good idea, either. The ACLU just this month filed a lawsuit in San Diego against UC-San Diego administrators who cut funding for all student print media following a condemnation of a satirical paper.