Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier

In Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier (1988), the plaintiffs argued that educators do not offend the first amendment by exercising editorial control over the style and content of student speech in school-sponsored expressive activities so long as their actions are reasonably related to legitimate pedagogical concerns. The students, on the other hand, asserted that their rights were violated by the deletion from a certain issue of the paper of two pages that included an article describing school students’ experiences with pregnancy and another article discussing the impact of divorce on students at the school.

Court Information:

JUSTICE WHITE delivered the opinion of the Court.

Petitioners are the Hazelwood School District in St. Louis, Missouri; various school officials; Robert Eugene Reynolds, the principal of Hazelwood East High School, and Howard Emerson, a teacher in the school district. Respondents are three former Hazelwood East students who were staff members of Spectrum, the school newspaper. They contend that school officials violated their First Amendment rights by deleting two pages of articles from the May 13, 1983, issue of Spectrum.

Spectrum was written and edited by the Journalism II class at Hazelwood East. The newspaper was published every three weeks or so during the 1982-1983 school year. More than 4,500 copies of the newspaper were distributed during that year to students, school personnel, and members of the community.

The Board of Education allocated funds from its annual budget for the printing of Spectrum...

The practice at Hazelwood East during the spring of 1983 semester was for the journalism teacher to submit page proofs of each Spectrum issue to Principal Reynolds for his review prior to publication. On May 10, Emerson delivered the proofs of the May 13 edition to Reynolds, who objected to two of the articles scheduled to appear in that edition. One of the stories described three Hazelwood East students’ experiences with pregnancy; the other discussed the impact of divorce on students at the school.

... Reynolds believed that there was not time to make the necessary changes in the stories before the scheduled press run and that the newspaper would not appear before the end of the school year if printing were delayed to any significant extent. He concluded that his only options under the circumstances were to publish a four-page newspaper instead of the planned six-page newspaper, eliminating the two pages on which the offending stories appeared, or to publish no newspaper at all. Accordingly, he directed Emerson to withhold from publication the two pages containing the stories on pregnancy and divorce. [The two pages deleted from the newspaper also contained articles on teenage marriage, runaways, and juvenile delinquents, as well as a general article on teenage pregnancy. Reynolds testified that he has no objection to these articles and that they were deleted only because they appeared on the same pages as the two objectionable articles.] He informed his superiors of the decision, and they concurred.

Respondents subsequently commenced this action in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri seeking a declaration that their First Amendment rights had been violated, injunctive relief, and monetary damages...

II

Students in the public schools do not "shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate." Tinker, supra, at 506. They cannot be punished merely for expressing their personal views on the school premises -- whether "in the cafeteria, or on the playing field, or on the campus during the authorized hours," Id., at 512-513 -- unless school authorities have reason to believe that such expression will "substantially interfere with the work of the school or impinge upon the rights of other students." Id., at 509.

We have nonetheless recognized that the First Amendment rights of students in the public schools "are not automatically coextensive with the rights of adults in other settings," Bethel School District No. 403 v. Fraser, 478 U.S._,_, (1986), and must be "applied in light of the special characteristics of the school environment." Tinker, supra, at 506; cf. New Jersey v. T.L.O., 469 U.S. 325, 341-343 (1985). A school need not tolerate student speech that is inconsistent with its "basic educational mission." ...school facilities may be deemed to be public forums only if school authorities have "by policy or by practice" opened those facilities "for indiscriminate use by the general public," ...

... The policy of school officials toward Spectrum was reflected in Hazelwood School Board Policy 348.51 providing that "[s]chool sponsored publications are developed within the adopted curriculum and its educational implications in regular classroom activities." App 22. The Hazelwood East Curriculum Guide described the Journalism II course as a "laboratory situation in which the students publish the school newspaper applying skills they have learned in Journalism I." Id., at 11. The lessons that were to be learned from the Journalism II course, according to the Curriculum Guide, included development of journalistic skills under deadline pressure, "the legal, moral, and ethical restrictions imposed upon journalists with the school community," and "responsibility and acceptance of criticism for articles of opinion." Ibid. Journalism II was taught by a faculty member during regular class hours. Students received grades and academic credit for their performance in the course.

School officials did not deviate in practice from their policy that production of Spectrum was to be part of the educational curriculum and a "regular classroom activity."

The question whether the First Amendment requires a school to tolerate particular student speech -- the question that we addressed in Tinker -- is different from the question whether the First Amendment requires a school affirmatively to promote particular student speech. The former question addresses educator’s ability to silence a student’s personal expression that happens to occur on the school premises. The latter question concerns educators’ authority over school-sponsored publications, theatrical productions and other expressive activities that students, parents, and members of the public might reasonably perceive to bear the imprimatur of the school...

Educators are entitled to exercise greater control over this second form of student expression to assure 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 ...

We also conclude that Principal Reynolds acted reasonably in requiring the deletion from the May 13 issue of Spectrum of the pregnancy article, the divorce article, and the remaining articles that were to appear on the same pages of the newspaper... Reynolds could reasonably have concluded that the students who had written and edited these articles had not sufficiently mastered those portions of the Journalism II curriculum that pertained to the treatment of controversial issues and personal attacks, the need to protect the privacy of individuals whose most intimate concerns are to be revealed in the newspaper, and "the legal, moral, and ethical restriction imposed upon journalists within [a] school community" that includes adolescent subjects and readers.

DISSENTING OPINION -- Brennan, Marshall, and Blackmun

At the beginning of each school year, student journalists published a Statement of Policy -- tacitly approved each year by school authorities -- announcing their expectation that "Spectrum, as a student-press publication, accepts all rights implied by the First Amendment... Only speech that ‘materially and substantially interferes with the requirement of appropriate discipline’ can be found unacceptable and therefore prohibited." ...The school board itself affirmatively guaranteed the students of Journalism II an atmosphere conducive to fostering such an appreciation and exercising the full panoply of rights associated with a free student press. "School sponsored student publications," it vowed, "will not restrict free expression or diverse viewpoints within the rules of responsible journalism." App.22 (Board Policy 348.51).

This case arose when the Hazelwood East administration breached its own promise...the school principal, without prior consultation or explanation, excised six articles...not because any of the articles would "materially and substantially interfere with the requirements of appropriate discipline," but simply because he considered two of the six "inappropriate, personal, sensitive, and unsuitable" for student consumption. In my view... He violated the First Amendment’s prohibition against censorship of any student expression that neither disrupts classwork nor invades the rights of others, and against any censorship that is not narrowly tailored to serve its purpose...

While the "constitutional rights of students in public school are not automatically coextensive with the rights of adults in other settings," ...students in public schools do not "shed their constitutional rights of freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate" ...public educators must accommodate some student expression even if it offends them or others’ views or values that contradict those the school wishes to inculcate.

edt301\ hazel.cse