Supreme Court turns down college media censorship case

U.S. Supreme Court members announced Tuesday they would not hear the five-year college media censorship battle Hosty v. Carter, leaving university media advisers uncertain of the future of the First Amendment issue.\nThe case centers around a 2001 controversy when Governors State University Dean Patricia Carter told the school newspaper's printer not to publish the paper until \nadministration had approved its content. \nStudents sued Carter, claiming their First Amendment rights had been violated, and won in a federal district court. But a later 7th District Court of Appeals decision \ndetermined that the defendant would not be liable for \nthe damages because the law was too unclear at the time of Carter's actions.\n"The Hosty case is the first time that we know of where a high school standard was used to interfere with the free speech of college students who are adults," said Director of IU Student Media David Adams, who also serves as president of the Student Press Law Center.\nAlthough the Supreme Court does not have a standing decision regarding college newspapers, in the 1988 decision, Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier, it ruled that officials could legally censor a high school class newspaper without a "policy or practice establishing it as a public forum for freedom of expression" for educational purposes, according to the SPLC Web site.\nSchool of Journalism assistant professor Tony Fargo said the Supreme Court's decision not to hear the case does not necessarily mean administrators will have the right to censor college publications -- it just makes the situation a little more unclear.\n"Everybody had assumed that Hazelwood would not apply to college papers," Fargo said. "What Hosty did is it kind of attacked that assumption. It left open a door that would allow college administrators more leeway to censor student publications."\nThe Hosty v. Carter decision becomes even more \nunclear, Adams said, in a specific line in the case that compares the situation to the Hazelwood decision.\n"There is one phrase in there that scares the crap out of me," Adams said, referring to a line out of the official Court of Appeals ruling.\nThe phrase states that Hazelwood's framework applies to student newspapers at colleges, secondary and elementary schools funded by their schools. \nAlthough Indiana is part of the 7th District, Adams said he does not believe IU publications will be affected by the Court of Appeals decision because the Indiana Daily Student and the Arbutus are financially independent from the University, meaning they receive no money from student fees.\n"That could never happen at IU because the publications are self-supporting," he said. "But it would probably apply to 99 percent of newspapers in the country, as well as several schools in the Big Ten."\nIn fact, Indiana Daily Student Editor in Chief Rick Newkirk said he did not even follow the case closely because he knew it would not directly affect his publication.\n"It doesn't appear to be able to directly affect us, although when First Amendment violations occur in a newspaper, we are all affected," he said. "We're all journalists. This situation can be perceived as an affront to First Amendment rights."\nFargo said that although the decision might be perceived as an opening for administrative college media censorship, he thinks very few administrators will follow suit. \n"I don't think most college administrators would want to walk through that door," he said. "I hope most administrators would respect freedom of the press enough that they wouldn't."\nHe said the Supreme Court's decision not to hear the case leaves college administrators with the always-present possibility of their own students suing and the Supreme Court choosing to hear that case.\nThe Court of Appeals ruling, which Fargo and Adams both said leaves college media censorship standards unclear, will stand unless a later case overturns it.\n"It was a nondecision," Fargo said. "I think it really means, we don't know"