Desilets v. Clearview Regional Board of Education

Supreme Court of New Jersey · 1994 · Property

PropertyFreedom of expressionStudent speechSchool-sponsored publicationsFirst Amendmentstudent newspapernon-public forumschool-sponsored speech

Facts

A junior high school student wrote movie reviews of two R-rated films, "Mississippi Burning" and "Rain Man," for the school newspaper, Pioneer Press. School officials refused to publish the reviews. The newspaper was supervised by a designated faculty member, but participation did not earn grades or academic credit and was not part of regular classroom assignments. The school board claimed the refusal was supported by educational policy, but it conceded it had no specific policy on reviews of R-rated films and the record showed R-rated movies had been discussed in class, referred to in the library, and previously reviewed and published in the student newspaper.

Issue

Whether, under the First Amendment and Hazelwood, school officials could refuse to publish a student's reviews of R-rated films in a school-sponsored student newspaper. Also, whether the newspaper was a public forum and whether the asserted school policy established a legitimate pedagogical basis for the censorship.

Rule

A school-sponsored student newspaper that is supervised by faculty and designed to impart knowledge or skills is not necessarily a public forum even if participation is not for academic credit or part of a regular class. In such a non-public forum, educators may exercise editorial control over student speech if their actions are reasonably related to legitimate pedagogical concerns, but the school must establish an actual, sufficiently defined, and consistently applied educational policy to justify the restriction. Because disputes over the educational legitimacy of school policies implicate educational expertise, they should, if possible, first be considered by the Commissioner of Education.

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One of 10 multiple-choice questions for this case. Pick an answer to see why.

At a middle school in Columbus, Ohio, students publish a monthly magazine called The Compass. A faculty adviser reviews each issue before printing, the magazine is funded by the school, and students receive no grades or course credit for working on it. The principal blocks an article and argues the magazine is not a public forum.

Which is the strongest argument that The Compass is not a public forum?

Explanation. The majority held that a school-sponsored publication need not be part of a class or offer academic credit to be a non-public forum. What matters is whether school authorities opened it for indiscriminate public use; faculty supervision and the likelihood that the publication bears the school's imprimatur support non-public-forum status. The other choices misstate the forum analysis.