Hazelwood V. Kuhlmeier

Hazelwood V. Kuhlemeier was brought to the Supreme Court after students sued because the school administration censored their school newspaper’s feature about teen pregnancy at their school. The students believed that their work did not violate any of the standards laid out in the Tinker V. Des Moines decision and should not be censored. In this case the Supreme Court decided in a 5-3 ruling that the principal had the right to censor the newspaper because it was a school sponsored publication.

This ruling prompted many some schools to be censored, or to self-censor because they assumed that their administration would not allow them to publish content on certain issues. However, some states drafted a law in the immediate aftermath of this decision, which rolled student news publications in those states back to the Tinker standard. You can check what states have a student press freedom law, and learn about the campaign to advocate for a press freedom law in states that don’t yet have one here.