Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier (1988)

Summary

In Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier, the Supreme Court clarified some of the limits on First Amendment rights for public school students.  In 1983, a school principal censored two articles in a student newspaper discussing the issues of divorce and teenage pregnancy.  Members of the school newspaper brought a First Amendment challenge to the principal’s actions.  Rejecting the students’ challenge, the Supreme Court—in a five-to-three decision—ruled that the principal could block the publication of an article in a student newspaper as long as the decision was “reasonably related to legitimate pedagogical concerns.” While Tinker v. Des Moines Independent School District dealt with the ability of educators to silence a student’s personal expression occurring on the school premises, Hazelwood concerned the authority of educators over school-sponsored publications that students, parents, and members of the public “might reasonably perceive to bear the imprimatur of the school.”

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Excerpt: Majority Opinion, Justice Byron White

This case concerns the extent to which educators may exercise editorial control over the contents of a high school newspaper produced as part of the school’s journalism curriculum. . . .

Petitioners are the Hazelwood School District in St. Louis County, Missouri; various school officials; Robert Eugene Reynolds, the principal of Hazelwood East High School; and Howard Emerson, a teacher in the school district. Respondents are three former Hazelwood East students who were staff members of Spectrum, the school newspaper. They contend that school officials violated their First Amendment rights by deleting two pages of articles from the May 13, 1983, issue of Spectrum.

Spectrum was written and edited by the Journalism II class at Hazelwood East. The newspaper was published every three weeks or so during the 1982-1983 school year. More than 4,500 copies of the newspaper were distributed during that year to students, school personnel, and members of the community. . . .

The practice at Hazelwood East during the spring 1983 semester was for the journalism teacher to submit page proofs of each Spectrum issue to Principal Reynolds for his review prior to publication. On May 10, Emerson delivered the proofs of the May 13 edition to Reynolds, who objected to two of the articles scheduled to appear in that edition. One of the stories described three Hazelwood East students’ experiences with pregnancy; the other discussed the impact of divorce on students at the school.

Reynolds was concerned that, although the pregnancy story used false names “to keep the identity of these girls a secret,” the pregnant students still might be identifiable from the text. He also believed that the article’s references to sexual activity and birth control were inappropriate for some of the younger students at the school. In addition, Reynolds was concerned that a student identified by name in the divorce story had complained that her father “wasn’t spending enough time with my mom, my sister and I” prior to the divorce, “was always out of town on business or out late playing cards with the guys,” and “always argued about everything” with her mother. Reynolds believed that the student’s parents should have been given an opportunity to respond to these remarks, or to consent to their publication. He was unaware that Emerson had deleted the student’s name from the final version of the article.

Reynolds believed that there was no time to make the necessary changes in the stories before the scheduled press run, and that the newspaper would not appear before the end of the school year if printing were delayed to any significant extent. He concluded that his only options under the circumstances were to publish a four-page newspaper instead of the planned six-page newspaper, eliminating the two pages on which the offending stories appeared, or to publish no newspaper at all. Accordingly, he directed Emerson to withhold from publication the two pages containing the stories on pregnancy and divorce. He informed his superiors of the decision, and they concurred.

Respondents subsequently commenced this action in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, seeking a declaration that their First Amendment rights had been violated, injunctive relief, and monetary damages. . . .

Students in the public schools (under Tinker v. Des Moines) do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.” They cannot be punished merely for expressing their personal views on the school premises . . . unless school authorities have reason to believe that such expression will “substantially interfere with the work of the school or impinge upon the rights of other students.”

We have nonetheless recognized that the First Amendment rights of students in the public schools “are not automatically coextensive with the rights of adults in other settings,” and must be “applied in light of the special characteristics of the school environment.” 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. . . .

[S]chool officials were entitled to regulate the contents of Spectrum in any reasonable manner. It is this standard, rather than our decision in Tinker, that governs this case.

The question whether the First Amendment requires a school to tolerate particular student speech – the question that we addressed in Tinker – is different from the question whether the First Amendment requires a school affirmatively to promote particular student speech. The former question addresses educators’ ability to silence a student’s personal expression that happens to occur on the school premises. The latter question concerns educators’ authority over school-sponsored publications, theatrical productions, and other expressive activities that students, parents, and members of the public might reasonably perceive to bear the imprimatur of the school. These activities may fairly be characterized as part of the school curriculum, whether or not they occur in a traditional classroom setting, so long as they are supervised by faculty members and designed to impart particular knowledge or skills to student participants and audiences. 

Educators are entitled to exercise greater control over this second form of student expression to assure that participants learn whatever lessons the activity is designed to teach, that readers or listeners are not exposed to material that may be inappropriate for their level of maturity, and that the views of the individual speaker are not erroneously attributed to the school. Hence, a school may, in its capacity as publisher of a school newspaper or producer of a school play, “disassociate itself,” not only from speech that would “substantially interfere with [its] work . . . or impinge upon the rights of other students,” but also from speech that is, for example, ungrammatical, poorly written, inadequately researched, biased or prejudiced, vulgar or profane, or unsuitable for immature audiences. A school must be able to set high standards for the student speech that is disseminated under its auspices – standards that may be higher than those demanded by some newspaper publishers or theatrical producers in the “real” world – and may refuse to disseminate student speech that does not meet those standards. In addition, a school must be able to take into account the emotional maturity of the intended audience in determining whether to disseminate student speech on potentially sensitive topics, which might range from the existence of Santa Claus in an elementary school setting to the particulars of teenage sexual activity in a high school setting. A school must also retain the authority to refuse to sponsor student speech that might reasonably be perceived to advocate drug or alcohol use, irresponsible sex, or conduct otherwise inconsistent with “the shared values of a civilized social order,” . . . or to associate the school with any position other than neutrality on matters of political controversy. Otherwise, the schools would be unduly constrained from fulfilling their role as “a principal instrument in awakening the child to cultural values, in preparing him for later professional training, and in helping him to adjust normally to his environment.”

Accordingly, we conclude that the standard articulated in Tinker for determining when a school may punish student expression need not also be the standard for determining when a school may refuse to lend its name and resources to the dissemination of student expression. Instead, we hold that educators do not offend the First Amendment by exercising editorial control over the style and content of student speech in school-sponsored expressive activities, so long as their actions are reasonably related to legitimate pedagogical concerns. 

This standard is consistent with our oft-expressed view that the education of the Nation’s youth is primarily the responsibility of parents, teachers, and state and local school officials, and not of federal judges. It is only when the decision to censor a school-sponsored publication, theatrical production, or other vehicle of student expression has no valid educational purpose that the First Amendment is so “directly and sharply implicate[d]” . . . as to require judicial intervention to protect students’ constitutional rights. . . .

We also conclude that Principal Reynolds acted reasonably in requiring the deletion from the May 13 issue of Spectrum of the pregnancy article, the divorce article, and the remaining articles that were to appear on the same pages of the newspaper. . .

[W]e cannot reject as unreasonable Principal Reynolds’ conclusion that neither the pregnancy article nor the divorce article was suitable for publication in Spectrum. Reynolds could reasonably have concluded that the students who had written and edited these articles had not sufficiently mastered those portions of the Journalism II curriculum that pertained to the treatment of controversial issues and personal attacks, the need to protect the privacy of individuals whose most intimate concerns are to be revealed in the newspaper, and “the legal, moral, and ethical restrictions imposed upon journalists within [a] school community” that includes adolescent subjects and readers. Finally, we conclude that the principal’s decision to delete two pages of Spectrum, rather than to delete only the offending articles or to require that they be modified, was reasonable under the circumstances as he understood them. Accordingly, no violation of First Amendment rights occurred.
 

Excerpt: Dissent, Justice William Brennan

When the young men and women of Hazelwood East High School registered for Journalism II, they expected a civics lesson. Spectrum, the newspaper they were to publish, “was not just a class exercise in which students learned to prepare papers and hone writing skills, it was a . . . forum established to give students an opportunity to express their views while gaining an appreciation of their rights and responsibilities under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. . . .”

“[A]t the beginning of each school year,” the student journalists published a Statement of Policy – tacitly approved each year by school authorities – announcing their expectation that “Spectrum, as a student-press publication, accepts all rights implied by the First Amendment. . . . Only speech that ‘materially and substantially interferes with the requirements of appropriate discipline’ can be found unacceptable and therefore prohibited.”

The school board itself affirmatively guaranteed the students of Journalism II an atmosphere conducive to fostering such an appreciation and exercising the full panoply of rights associated with a free student press. “School-sponsored student publications,” it vowed, “will not restrict free expression or diverse viewpoints within the rules of responsible journalism.”

This case arose when the Hazelwood East administration breached its own promise, dashing its students’ expectations. The school principal, without prior consultation or explanation, excised six articles – comprising two full pages – of the May 13, 1983, issue of Spectrum. He did so not because any of the articles would “materially and substantially interfere with the requirements of appropriate discipline,” but simply because he considered two of the six “inappropriate, personal, sensitive, and unsuitable” for student consumption. 

In my view, the principal broke more than just a promise. He violated the First Amendment’s prohibitions against censorship of any student expression that neither disrupts classwork nor invades the rights of others, and against any censorship that is not narrowly tailored to serve its purpose. . . .

Free student expression undoubtedly sometimes interferes with the effectiveness of the school’s pedagogical functions. Some brands of student expression do so by directly preventing the school from pursuing its pedagogical mission: the young polemic who stands on a soapbox during calculus class to deliver an eloquent political diatribe interferes with the legitimate teaching of calculus. And the student who delivers a lewd endorsement of a student government candidate might so extremely distract an impressionable high school audience as to interfere with the orderly operation of the school. Other student speech, however, frustrates the school’s legitimate pedagogical purposes merely by expressing a message that conflicts with the school’s, without directly interfering with the school’s expression of its message: a student who responds to a political science teacher’s question with the retort, “socialism is good,” subverts the school’s inculcation of the message that capitalism is better. 

Even the maverick who sits in class passively sporting a symbol of protest against a government policy . . . or the gossip who sits in the student commons swapping stories of sexual escapade could readily muddle a clear official message condoning the government policy or condemning teenage sex. Likewise, the student newspaper that, like Spectrum, conveys a moral position at odds with the school’s official stance might subvert the administration’s legitimate inculcation of its own perception of community values.

If mere incompatibility with the school’s pedagogical message were a constitutionally sufficient justification for the suppression of student speech, school officials could censor each of the students or student organizations in the foregoing hypotheticals, converting our public schools into “enclaves of totalitarianism,” that “strangle the free mind at its source.” The First Amendment permits no such blanket censorship authority. While the “constitutional rights of students in public school are not automatically coextensive with the rights of adults in other settings,” students in the public schools do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.” Just as the public on the street corner must, in the interest of fostering “enlightened opinion,” tolerate speech that “tempt[s] [the listener] to throw [the speaker] off the street,” public educators must accommodate some student expression even if it offends them or offers views or values that contradict those the school wishes to inculcate. . . .

Since the censorship served no legitimate pedagogical purpose, it cannot by any stretch of the imagination have been designed to prevent “materia[l] disrup[tion of] classwork.” Nor did the censorship fall within the category that Tinker described as necessary to prevent student expression from “inva[ding] the rights of others.” If that term is to have any content, it must be limited to rights that are protected by law. . . Finally, even if the majority were correct that the principal could constitutionally have censored the objectionable material, I would emphatically object to the brutal manner in which he did so. Where “[t]he separation of legitimate from illegitimate speech calls for more sensitive tools,” the principal used a paper shredder. He objected to some material in two articles, but excised six entire articles. He did not so much as inquire into obvious alternatives, such as precise deletions or additions (one of which had already been made), rearranging the layout, or delaying publication. Such unthinking contempt for individual rights is intolerable from any state official. It is particularly insidious from one to whom the public entrusts the task of inculcating in its youth an appreciation for the cherished democratic liberties that our Constitution guarantees. . . .

The Court opens its analysis in this case by purporting to reaffirm Tinker’s time-tested proposition that public school students “do not shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.” That is an ironic introduction to an opinion that denudes high school students of much of the First Amendment protection that Tinker itself prescribed. Instead of “teach[ing] children to respect the diversity of ideas that is fundamental to the American system,” and “that our Constitution is a living reality, not parchment preserved under glass,” the Court today “teach[es] youth to discount important principles of our government as mere platitudes.” The young men and women of Hazelwood East expected a civics lesson, but not the one the Court teaches them today. 

I dissent.
 

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