Carter.'" These were referred to as ‘limited’ or ‘designated’ public forums and speakers there were entitled to protections similar to those in a traditional public forum. Traditionally, courts have looked at two things to determine forum status: policy (of the school, not just of the publication in question) and practice (how the publication has operated). Hazelwood said schools could censor school-sponsored newspapers. 3) Do not presume that language in existing policies that significantly differs from what is suggested above will protect you. In most other parts of the country, college press freedom rulings from the last 35 years provide a strong legal defense against school officials who may attempt to extend Hosty beyond the Seventh Circuit’s borders. But before the Hazelwood decision in 1988 (and in college press cases decided since), courts that applied forum analysis to student publications typically took for granted that a student-edited newspaper was, by its very nature, a designated public forum where student editors had been given the authority to make the content decisions. TERENCE T. EVANS, Circuit Judge. http://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/688/hosty-v-carter-7th-cir, . The university requested summary judgment on the students claims, and both the federal district court and a three-judge panel of the court of appeals refused to dismiss the case against Dean Carter. Docket no. Hazelwood‘s reasonable ‘pedagogical justification’ standard gives school officials the ability to censor a variety of material that has long been considered protected speech on college campuses. When student journalists refused to submit to such a demand, the paper stopped publishing. In Hosty , the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a dean who demanded prepublication review of a student newspaper at Governors’ State University in Illinois—because the administration did not like its content—is not liable for her brazen act of censorship. Hosty v. Carter. (emphasis added). 2005), stands for the principle that the framework identified by the Supreme Court in a high school press censorship case also applies at the college and university level. But college journalists and their advisers can help set the direction for the future by responding in force. [4], What that means, the court said, is that before college student journalists can determine the level of First Amendment protection they are entitled to, they must first determine if the school-subsidized publication they work for has been opened as a ‘public forum.’[5]. Thus getting an official policy statement from your college or university recognizing your publication as a designated public forum is of vital importance today. But in contrast to these disturbing aspects of the ruling, Hosty does have some affirming language. In October 2000, the editor of Governors State University's student newspaper, The Innovator, was told by Dean Patricia Carter to hold future issues until they were approved of by a school administrator, because it had published stories and editorials critical of the administration. Share this: Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) ... (7th Cir. David L. Hudson, Jr. is a law professor at Belmont who publishes widely on First Amendment topics. The student plaintiffs in the case have indicated they plan to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to consider their case, and supporters of their effort are growing in numbers. Public forum analysis, a method the courts created for determining when censorship is permitted on government-owned property, has become increasingly complicated in recent years. The fact that a publication was not tied to the school’s curriculum would not assure its forum status, the court said; even extracurricular publications could be a non-public forum. Because the Seventh Circuit in Hosty explicitly recognized that those publications that are ‘designated public forums’ are places where ‘no censorship [is] allowed,’ this language could be crucial. But almost everyone agrees on one thing: if the Seventh Circuit’s decision to extend the Supreme Court’s 1988 Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier ruling to public colleges and universities prompts even a small fraction of the censorship faced by high school journalists, the college press could be in for the fight of its life. He also is the author of many First Amendment books, including, (ABC-CLIO, 2017). 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