Two leading authorities on the First Amendment rights of student journalists say that administrators at the Orange County High School of the Arts crossed a legal line when they halted publication of the school's newspaper this week.
Attorney Frank LoMonte, executive director of the Arlington, Va.-based Student Press Law Center advocacy group, and Rick Pullen, dean of Cal State Fullerton's communications school, told the Register that Principal Sue Vaughn appeared to have no legally justifiable reason to stop the newspaper's publication and should be ordered to receive training in First Amendment law.
You don't have to like it or agree with it, but it is the law.
I know of a young lady from a small town near where I live who attended a high school where the board decided they didn't like her editorials. So, they shut down the student newspaper. Her father sued, rightly claiming that his daughters first amendment rights were being trampled upon and violated. They won, big time. More than enough financial compensation was awarded by the court that she was able to pay to attend a well known Ivy league school.....
ReplyDeleteIf she gets away with an unsupported expansion of her power then the student newspaper's one less thing she has to worry about. If she doesn't then so what? She's unlikely to lose her job or, in fact, much of anything.
ReplyDeleteSome possibility of gain against no chance of loss.