David Lemcoe Mrs. Boldus 3rd Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier The Spectrum was a school newspaper of Hazelwood East High School and was written by Journalism II students. Their principal, Robert Reynolds, was reviewing the proofs for the May 13th issue, when he found two articles he believed to be inappropriate. He quickly deleted the articles from the issue. Cathy Kuhlmeier and two other Journalism students took the case to court, saying their right of the press was violated when the principal deleted two of the pages. One of the articles was about teen pregnancies with interviews from students at the school. The writers had changed the names, but the principal believed that it was too easy to find out who it was and that the article was inappropriate. The other article was about fathers that were not around in their child's lives. The article portrayed the fathers of the students (whose names were changed) as bad fathers that did not care about their children. The principal believed that the article was biased and did not allow a chance for the fathers to tell their side of the story. The case was originally ruled in favor of the school district. It was then overturned in a Court of Appeals, and finally overturned again in the US Supreme Court. The Supreme Court ruled that for schoolfunded publications are not considered public forums, therefore its editors are entitled to a lower level of the First Amendment. School officials, though, are not allowed to remove content with grounds of personal opinion of belief.
David Lemcoe Mrs. Boldus 3rd
Example of a school newspaper. Although it is not written by students, it is subject to approval by school officials.