Judge Rejects Libel Suit Filed by Ex-Student Editor : Courts: In her second legal attempt, Jae Levine Weiss contended that Valley College’s newspaper had defamed her in two articles. Controversy surrounds the paper.

A Superior Court Judge on Friday threw out a suit by a disgruntled former assistant editor of the Valley Star, the student newspaper at Valley College, who contended she was libeled by two Star articles that mentioned that she and several other staff members had resigned.

Van Nuys Superior Court Judge John Major rejected the defamation suit by student Jae Levine Weiss, who worked several semesters at the Valley Star until leaving in January. Major rejected the suit once before in May, but gave Weiss a chance to present her arguments again. In Major’s brief order Friday, he rejected the suit without comment.

The lawsuit was part of a controversy that split journalism students and the Valley College Journalism Department this past semester and culminated in the suspension of Editor Chris Mayda in May. The department sponsors the newspaper as a teaching laboratory.

In January, shortly after Mayda was named by a faculty committee to head the Valley Star for the spring semester, several staff members, including Weiss, left the paper. Mayda and faculty adviser Tony Cifarelli have maintained that the students left voluntarily, while Weiss said they were forced out.

In her lawsuit against Mayda and 11 other student newspaper staff members, Weiss charged that she was defamed in two articles--a profile of Mayda that mentioned that “several staff members resigned from the paper,” and a small article that apologized to readers for production problems that occurred “in part from lack of support from the past staff.” Neither article mentioned Weiss by name.

Weiss and Arthur I. Weiss, her husband and attorney, did not return phone calls from The Times on Friday.

Jeff Riffer, the attorney representing the 12 student defendants, said, “The lawsuit should have never been filed in the first place.” He contended that Weiss suffered no damages as a result of the articles.

“The courts aren’t a remedy for any perceived slight. She has to show that she was harmed economically to receive damages and she never made that showing,” Riffer said. “The lawsuit completely lacks merit.”

Friday’s action was the latest chapter in a controversy that swirled around Mayda during her tenure there. Several months after Weiss and the others left, she wrote a column stating that high birthrates hinder the education of minorities. The column led to accusations of racism and threats against her and touched off protests by 200 angry students and faculty members. College officials said it was the largest demonstration in recent years.

The column--published April 2 under the headline “Do literacy and babies mix?”--said high birthrates among less-educated, lower-income Latinos and blacks are forcing parents to divide their attention among too many children to give them needed educational and economic opportunities.

“The uneducated have babies with such regularity that many educated wonder if it is a conspiracy,” Mayda wrote in the column’s opening paragraph. “Unfortunately, if minorities continue to have more children, they also cut off chances to further education for those children,” she continued.

After the column was published, about 10 staff members and several instructors asked her to resign. She refused, but several weeks later a committee of journalism faculty voted 4 to 2 to suspend her. Journalism Department Chairman Roger Graham said at the time that the decision was a result of her poor management. He said her columns had “no bearing on the decision” to suspend her.

Mayda, who could not be reached for comment Friday, said at the time of her dismissal that she was considering legal action.