Justices Give Schools Wide Powers to Censor Students : Setback for Landmark ’69 Ruling

The Supreme Court today gave public school officials broad new authority to censor student newspapers and other forms of student expression.

The court, by a 5-3 vote, ruled that a Hazelwood, Mo., high school principal did not violate students’ free-speech rights by ordering two pages deleted from an issue of a student-produced, school-sponsored newspaper.

“A school need not tolerate student speech that is inconsistent with its basic educational mission even though the government could not censor similar speech outside the school,” Justice Byron R. White wrote for the court.

He said judicial intervention to protect students’ free-speech rights is warranted “only when the decision to censor a school-sponsored publication, theatrical production or other vehicle of student expression has no valid educational purpose.”

The ruling does not affect colleges or universities.

The dissenting justices accused the court of condoning “thought control,” adding, “Such unthinking contempt for individual rights is intolerable.”

White was joined in the court majority by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O’Connor and Antonin Scalia.

‘Expected Civics Lesson’

Justices William J. Brennan, Thurgood Marshall and Harry A. Blackmun dissented. In an opinion for the three, Brennan said, “The young men and women of Hazelwood East expected a civics lesson, but not the one the court teaches them today.”

Today’s decision did not use the same standard of review used by the court in a landmark 1969 decision involving the wearing of anti-war armbands by high school students. In that decision, the court said public schools may curtail students’ free-speech rights only when the student expression is materially disruptive or invades the rights of others.

(In the Los Angeles Unified School District, Richard K. Mason, a special counsel to the superintendent, called the decision “a victory for education.” It supports a school board policy in effect since 1978 that prohibits student publications from printing material that is libelous, profane, violates an individual’s right to privacy, advocates violence or unlawful activities, or criticizes a particular religion, sex, race or ethnic group.)

The Missouri controversy arose in the spring of 1983 when Robert Reynolds, principal of Hazelwood East High School, refused to permit publication of two articles in the Spectrum, a school-sponsored newspaper produced by students in a journalism class.

One of the articles dealt with teen-age pregnancy and consisted of personal accounts by three Hazelwood East students who became pregnant. Their names were changed in an attempt to keep their identities secret. Each of the three accounts discussed the girl’s reaction to her pregnancy, the reaction of her parents, her future plans and details of her sex life.

Effect of Divorce

The second article dealt with the effect of divorce on children and quoted from interviews with students.

School policy required that the principal review each issue of the Spectrum before publication. Reynolds objected to the two articles, and the pages on which they appeared were deleted.

Journalism students Kathy Kuhlmeier, Lee Ann Tippett-West and Leslie Smart sued Reynolds and other school officials, contending that their freedom of speech had been violated.

A federal trial judge ruled against the students but the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated the suit. It ruled that the Spectrum is a “public forum” because it was intended to be and operated as a conduit for student viewpoints.

But the Supreme Court ruled that the Spectrum is not, and never was, a public forum.