California considers bill to protect journalism teachers
A state Senate committee has approved a San Francisco lawmaker's proposed legal protections for high school and college journalism teachers after hearing instructors' complaints of retaliation for hard-hitting articles in student newspapers. “Allowing a school administration to censor in any way is contrary to the democratic process and the ability of a student newspaper to serve as the watchdog,” Sen. Leland Yee said after the Judiciary Committee sent his bill to the Senate floor Tuesday. The measure, SB1370, would prohibit school officials from punishing teachers for allowing students to publish articles that are covered by California's guarantee of freedom of the press on campus. Teacher and student organizations and labor unions support the bill, while the Association of California School Administrators opposes it. Despite a 1988 U.S. Supreme Court ruling allowing teachers and administrators to censor public school newspapers and remove articles they find objectionable, California laws protect students' right to publish articles as long as they are not libelous, obscene, or likely to lead to lawbreaking or disorder. But Yee says the protections have been undermined by retaliation against journalism teachers. Yee presented statements from other teachers, including a Los Angeles instructor who said he had been dismissed as the newspaper adviser after an editorial that criticized school searches, and a Garden Grove (Orange County) teacher who said her principal admitted removing her from the newspaper because of student editorials.
Source: San Francisco Chronicle, 4/10/08, By Bob Egelko
[Editor’s Note: For information on similar legislation in Oregon and a legal dispute in Washington, which also has debated such a measure, see below.]
NSBA School Law pages on Washington school district lawsuit