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Respondents, former high school students who were staff members of the
school's newspaper, filed suit in Federal District Court against
petitioners, the school district and school officials, alleging that
respondents' First Amendment rights were violated by the deletion from a
certain issue of the paper of two pages that included an article
describing school students' experiences with pregnancy and another
article discussing the impact of divorce on students at the school.
The newspaper was written and edited by a journalism class, as part of
the school's curriculum. Pursuant to the school's practice, the teacher
in charge of the paper submitted page proofs to the school's principal,
who objected to the pregnancy story because the pregnant students,
although not named, might be identified from the text, and because he
believed that the article's references to sexual activity and birth
control were inappropriate for some of the younger students.
The principal objected to the divorce article because the page proofs he
was furnished identified by name (deleted by the teacher from the final
version) a student who complained of her father's conduct, and the
principal believed that the student's parents should have been given an
opportunity to respond to the remarks or to consent to their
publication. Believing that there was no time to make necessary changes
in the articles if the paper was to be issued before the end of the
school year, the principal directed that the pages on which they
appeared be withheld from publication even though other, unobjectionable
articles were included on such pages.
The District Court held that no First Amendment violation had occurred.
The Court of Appeals reversed.
1. Held: Respondents' First Amendment rights were not violated. |