Hazelwood School District v. Kulmeier
484 U.S. 260 (1988)
By
Josh Plump

Facts:

Three former students from Hazelwood East High School believed that the Hazelwood School District violated their First Amendment rights. The students all were part of a journalism class offered by the school. Part of the class was publishing and writing the school newspaper titled Spectrum. Before the newspaper would be published, the principal and journalism teacher would review the articles. In this case, the principal deleted two pages of the newspaper covering controversial topics. The first article deleted covered the issue of teenage pregnancy at the school. The article referred to three instances of pregnancy that occurred at the school. Even though the article did not mention any specific names, the people might be identified from the context. The principal also believed that the mention of sexual activity and birth control might be inappropriate for the younger students at the school. The second article concerned the topic of divorce. In this article a student complained about her father’s behavior and the principal believed that the father should have had an equal opportunity to respond to what was said in the article.

Court’s Decision:

The U.S. District Court in Missouri ruled that no First Amendment violations had occurred. When the case was appealed, the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit reversed the decision made by the district court. Finally, the Supreme Court made the ultimate decision that no violation of First Amendment rights had occurred and that Principal Reynolds acted appropriately.

Basis of Decision:

The school newspaper was part of the journalism class, so, it can be considered a school-sponsored activity. Since it is a school-sponsored form of speech, and not free speech, this gives the school a right to rule over it. Another statement made by the Supreme Court was that Principal Reynolds could have ruled that the students who took part in writing and editing these articles had not sufficiently mastered those portions of the Journalism curriculum.