Hazelwood East High School Case Study

Does the decision of a principal to prohibit the publishing of certain articles,which he believes we're inappropriate, in the school newspaper violate the student journalists’ First Amendment right of freedom of speech? This issue was discussed after a student named Catherine Kuhlmeier in Hazelwood East High school in St.Louis County, Missouri was enrolled in a journalism class II in which she was writing a newspaper known as “The Spectrum”with other students. Two of those articles contained a story of parents being divorced and a story of a teenage pregnancy. The divorce article was a personal issue in which a girl blamed her father for his actions in leading towards her parents' divorce. The teenage pregnancy story stated her experiences
Although the names were changed the principal was concerned that the students may be able to recognize the identity of the girls who were interviewed for the pregnancy article. As a result, Reynolds simply published a version of the newspaper that didn't include those two stories. However, he made the decision discussing them with his supervisors of the school but didn't give the students a chance to address the
On January 13,1988 the Supreme Court decided that the principal's actions did not violate the students freedom of speech. The court stated that the paper was sponsored by the school and the school had the right in preventing the publication of articles that seemed inappropriate. In other words, the Court stated that the paper was not intended as a public newspaper in which everyone can read and express their views. Clearly, it was a limited newspaper for journalism students to write articles for the requirements of the journalism II class, and the school had the write to edit anything