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California legislation protecting student newspapers moves forward
May 11, 2006
CALIFORNIA —
Two bills that would help protect student newspapers in California from
censorship and theft are making their way through the California State
Legislature.
AB
2581, a bill designed to protect the First Amendment rights of college
journalists, passed in a 76-0 vote in the California State Assembly today. The bill will now be sent to the California State Senate for consideration.
Assemblymen Leeland Yee, D-San Francisco, and
Joe Nation, D-Marin, introduced the college censorship
bill.
Jim Ewert, legal counsel for the California Newspaper Publishers Association, a supporter of the bill, said there has been no formal opposition to the bill so far.
AB
2612, a bill that would make it a misdemeanor to take more than 25 copies of a
free newspaper, passed an Assembly vote last week. Ewert said the bill is now
awaiting assignment to a committee in the California State
Senate.
Assemblyman George Plescia, R-San Diego, authored the theft
bill.
The bill extending protection to college journalists is in
response to the Hosty v. Carter
decision
out of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Ewert said. The appeals court
decision held that the Supreme Court's 1988
Hazelwood
decision limiting high school student free expression rights could extend to
college and university campuses in Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin. The U.S.
Supreme Court decided last month not to hear the
Hosty case, letting stand the June 2005
decision out of the 7th Circuit.
Ten days after the 7th Circuit
decision, the general counsel for the California State University system sent a
memo to university presidents saying the
Hosty decision could impact
California.
"[T]he case appears to signal that CSU campuses may have
more latitude than previously believed to censor the content of subsidized
student newspapers, provided that there is an established practice of
regularized content review and approval for pedagogical purposes," wrote CSU
general counsel Christine Helwick at that time.
Although the 7th
Circuit’s ruling is only applicable in the three Midwestern states covered
by the appeals court, Ewert said the memo raised some concerns amongst student
press advocates in the Golden State.
“Ordinarily we
wouldn’t be that concerned about a 7th Circuit decision,” Ewert
said. “[The memo] just sent ripples throughout the student press. We
thought it might be a good idea to ask the legislature to extend the speech
protection that exists in the law now to student
publications.”
And by explicitly including the student press in
California’s Leonard Law, the proposed legislation does just that, Ewert
said.
The Leonard Law protects student speech by making it illegal to
enforce any rule on California’s college campuses that would punish a
student for speech that would be protected under the First Amendment or
California’s Constitution off school grounds. The legislative history of
the law states: "It is the intent of the Legislature that a student shall have
the same right to exercise his or her right to free speech on campus as he or
she enjoys when off campus."
Ewert said the proposed bill, which also
explicitly prohibits administrative prior restraint of student publications,
would make it clear that the Leonard Law protecting freedom of expression on
California’s campuses clearly extends to the student
press.
“In the Hosty
case, that court found that students rights in regard to the student publication
were limited,” he said. “Since California has such a long and rich
tradition of protecting student speech, we decided that we would simply clarify
existing law to include the student press in the realm of protected
speech.”
The bill prohibiting the theft of newspapers would
make it a misdemeanor to take more than 25 copies of a free newspaper with the
intent to recycle them for money, sell or barter them, deprive others of the
ability to read the publication or harm a business
competitor.
“The student press is probably as much a victim of
newspaper theft as most professional/mainstream newspapers,” Ewert said.
“Professional publications are generally stolen for their recycle value.
Thefts on college campuses tend to occur based on content/viewpoint
discrimination.”
—by
Evan Mayor, SPLC staff writer
© 2006 Student Press Law Center
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