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#19 Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier
21 Plays1 month ago
In this episode we re-argue the Supreme Court case Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier.
High school students wrote and edited articles as the staff for their school newspaper. One day, they found that their articles about divorce and teen pregnancy had been removed from their newest issue. The principal cut them because he thought they were “inappropriate.” That’s a violation of the First Amendment, right?
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Relitigated' Podcast
00:00:01
Speaker
Hi, welcome to Relitigated, the show where five friends who are absolutely not lawyers attempt to retry a real Supreme Court case. I'm your host, Nikki, and this is episode 19.
Exploring Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeyer
00:00:14
Speaker
Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeyer, decided 1988.
00:00:19
Speaker
A quick note before we get started. As always, we try our best to represent the facts and decisions in the case as accurately as possible, but we're not lawyers and nothing in this episode should be taken as legal advice.
00:00:33
Speaker
With that out of the way, let's start the show.
00:00:37
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You scribble hieroglyphics as wingdings, and we'll put that as the subtitles for the episode, and that's all good.
00:00:47
Speaker
Hi there. Welcome to the Relitigated Podcast.
Meet the Hosts and Justices
00:00:50
Speaker
I'm your host, Nikki, and I'm joined by my co-host, Jarrett. Hello, Jarrett. Hello. We also have with us three friends who will be role-playing as our justices.
00:01:01
Speaker
First, we have Associate Justice Adam, honestly can't believe you keep inviting me back for this. Next, we have Associate Justice Chris. Hello.
00:01:14
Speaker
And lastly, we have our Chief Justice, Mike. Hello. If you're new to the show, here's how this works.
Case Presentation Process
00:01:23
Speaker
Jarrett and i have selected a real Supreme Court case, and our justices do not know what case we have selected.
00:01:29
Speaker
Jarrett will introduce the case to us and walk us through the facts so we can all get familiar with the details. The justices are free to ask factual questions during this time, and we will answer as best we can.
00:01:41
Speaker
Then we'll move into oral arguments where Jarrett will role play as the petitioner and I will role play as the respondent. We each get seven minutes to make our case, during which time the justices can interrupt us and ask probing questions.
00:01:57
Speaker
When the arguments are over, the justices will deliberate and deliver their own opinions. The final rulings do not need to be unanimous. Majority opinion wins. Even if two or more justices agree in principle, they can disagree as to why.
00:02:12
Speaker
Once we've had our fun with our mock hearing, Jarrett and I will reveal what the Supreme Court really decided and talk about how we feel about the actual results and why this case matters.
Background of the Hazelwood Case
00:02:22
Speaker
Sound good to everyone?
00:02:24
Speaker
Oh, we always feel so bad about how the Supreme Court actually ruled. But yeah, sounds great. Part of the game. Part of the game is just learning about how great our history is. Great. I mean, excuse me, let me take two.
00:02:37
Speaker
Yes, Nikki, sounds great. Ready to play.
00:02:42
Speaker
And with that, I will turn it over to Jarrett. All right. Thank you much, Nikki. Our case for this episode is Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeyer. At the Hazelwood East High School in St. Louis County, Missouri, students in the Journalism II class put their education into practice, producing and publishing a paper called The Spectrum.
00:03:05
Speaker
The students staffed all the roles of the paper, from developing stories to writing, editing, and design activities. Overseeing the group was a journalism teacher who submitted proofs of each paper to the principal for final approval before publication.
00:03:20
Speaker
While the Spectrum was the school's paper, it was also distributed to community members, which helped to raise revenue that defrayed some of the program's cost. In May, at the end of the school term, the journalism teachers submitted the proofs of the paper's final edition of the year to the principal as usual.
00:03:39
Speaker
Though most of the content was fine, two stories on two separate pages jumped out to the principal as inappropriate. The first was a story about teen pregnancy and contained interviews with three students who are who were or had been pregnant.
00:03:54
Speaker
The reporters had given the students fake names, but the principal felt that details in the story would make the students identifiable and therefore violate their privacy. At the same time, as a product of the school and part of its educational mission, the principal felt that the story was not fitting for younger students to read about.
00:04:13
Speaker
The second story concerned divorce and contained an interview with a student that made potentially inflammatory statements about one of their parents. The intention of the staff was to change the student's name, but the proof that the principal received had not been changed yet.
00:04:29
Speaker
As a result, the principal felt that the student's family should have had an opportunity to either respond or consent to the publication of the article.
Journey Through the Courts
00:04:39
Speaker
Because the end of the school year was so close, the principal feared that there was not enough time to make changes and get the paper published and distributed before summer break.
00:04:48
Speaker
So, in consultation with their superiors, the principal removed the two pages with the two articles, changing the six-page paper into a four-page paper with a total of seven stories cut.
00:05:00
Speaker
The journalism students did not find out about the changes until the papers were delivered. Following the revelation, the principal met with the paper's editors, where he said that the articles were, quote, inappropriate, personal, sensitive, and unsuitable, end quote.
00:05:15
Speaker
In response, the students printed copies of the offending articles and distributed them around the school themselves. Ultimately, with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, or ACLU, an editor and two reporters for the paper filed a lawsuit alleging that the principal had violated their First Amendment rights of free speech.
00:05:34
Speaker
It wanted the courts to provide injunctive relief and monetary damages. The district court did not provide the injunctive relief that the students sought, arguing that the principal had not violated their First Amendment rights.
00:05:47
Speaker
It was their opinion that the concerns about privacy and journalism fairness were reasonable and that the principal was justified in removing those articles. The students appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, where the district court's ruling was reversed.
00:06:04
Speaker
In the view of the Court of Appeals, the newspaper had expanded beyond the scope of the school with distribution into the community. As a result, the paper was a public forum and should not be censored. The school district appealed the decision of the Court of Appeals to the Supreme Court, which now puts the case before our justices to decide.
Key Question: Were First Amendment Rights Violated?
00:06:22
Speaker
So, the question for this episode is, did the principal violate the First Amendment rights of the students when he refused the stories they wrote in the school's paper? Any questions?
00:06:34
Speaker
This one's a banger. love this one. This is a good case. This is a good case, and I'm ready to make some precedent. This entire case appeals so deeply to my personal sensibilities as someone who clashed with my high school principal over what I was and was not allowed to say to my fellow classmates in the printed word.
00:06:57
Speaker
Also, am I to understand correctly that these kids were making a high school newspaper and selling it to random people in their town? Yeah, they were. ah Unbelievable respect for that hustle.
00:07:10
Speaker
That's incredible. That's the kind of thing I would have aspired to in high school. Well, the the school bram that produced the paper and sold the students staffed the program.
00:07:22
Speaker
Okay. So they were unpaid labor, essentially. I mean, academia, man.
00:07:31
Speaker
it's and It's an internship. You're literally going to say some version of like, that's just preparing them for university life. ah Okay. Wow. Okay. So much to unpack here. um Let's continue.
00:07:45
Speaker
That's it. Factually. Yeah. Not much. else um I'm curious. I want to read about the three pregnant ones because I want to see how the principal was able to tie them back. It's like, well, it's the the brunette with the big Billy. Let's call her Samantha. The subtext of this case is how bad high school kids are at writing things um in any sort of in any sort of subtle way.
00:08:13
Speaker
Look, I was in creative writing. If only they had ChatGPT to write it for them. I'm going to have to guess that ChatGPT has existed for such a small slice of high school American high school life.
00:08:24
Speaker
But, you know, the the story where the kids are identified, the divorce is like inflammatory about the dad. Like these kids are not writing subtle stuff. Like this is just pure yellow journalism. help me see if anything, my original thought is like, so so the principal is acting like an editor.
00:08:41
Speaker
Get me pictures of Spider-Man.
00:08:46
Speaker
ah As far as like identifying the students, my my guess is that it was like, you know, the students in their interview were probably quoted as talking about who they hung out with or where they, where they went or whatnot. And it was just like, oh, okay.
00:09:03
Speaker
That's a school of 400 kids. Yeah. this This person wears that typically they hang out with those people typically. And so, you know, putting the pieces together, any other student would be like, oh, that's, you know, Linda. Yeah.
00:09:16
Speaker
Where's the journalism teacher in all this? Were they not, the program was quote unquote oversaw by a journalism teacher? I detect very little oversight. Yeah, i kind of, original thought is the principal stepped in and was like, well,
00:09:29
Speaker
Clearly this teacher didn't do their job. Someone's got to put a control on this crap. Additional backstory was that it did have a regular journalism teacher, but then I think a couple months before the end of the school year, he got a job. He took a job in like private industry and left. I think he was a host Yeah. And so then there was a sub who who kind of came in to to cover the course for the- Classic, classic story. The rest of the year. Teacher goes on leave, sub comes in, you end up in the Supreme Court.
00:10:00
Speaker
and The sub was someone who likes the, you know, the gossip columns, New York posts, enjoys their stories. ah Just like, you know, that this teacher, the sub comes in, looks, sees some like stuff about the football team. It's like, no, no, no. We need and to get people we want. need to spill some tea.
00:10:16
Speaker
but Hey, Bobby, didn't your parents get divorced? and So spice it up the topics of the stories, as I understand it, were developed by the teacher.
00:10:28
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Not the specifics of the story, but the teacher worked with the students to develop what topics they would write on. so Yeah, so the the regular teacher took a job and then um like two weeks before um the the edition of the paper was was finished. This is amazing.
00:10:49
Speaker
Jared, did this happen at our high school? It was incredible. I mean, some version of it. um Okay, so...
00:11:00
Speaker
I also really am curious about some of the details about how this escalated from like feud with the principal to the ACLU to the Supreme Court. Yeah. This just seems like this could have been this could have been ah an email, a meeting, a conversation. That's a logarithmic escalation of this state to this dispute here.
00:11:19
Speaker
Yeah. Like, how big is the subscribership of this newspaper? Like, what is at stake? I mean, my immediate- than the kids' rights. My immediate thought is that somebody's parent is a lawyer something. Like, I mean, who who knows? we don't We don't know, but- Great, great theory.
00:11:35
Speaker
oh Oh, good job, Jenny. We can make you a precedent. You want to be in the Supreme Court? You want to see it firsthand? I know you're in AP history and all, but- and she This will give you some hands on.
00:11:49
Speaker
Still feel like this could have been an after school 15 minute meeting. Yeah. you exhausted the facts of this they They did meet with the principal and they, they were dissatisfied with the, the principal's views.
00:12:02
Speaker
And so they went totally punk rock and just printed Xerox them themselves. This absolutely happened in the nineties. It had to have happened in the nineties, early two thousands. This feels like a nineties. All these kids were listening to rock.
00:12:19
Speaker
Props for them printing it themselves. i just The fact that this got to the to any court level, like the fact that this actually became a legal thing, I'm curious to see the arguments here. This is literally the stuff I fanized fantasized about in high school.
00:12:34
Speaker
like I'm going to sue my principal. We we've we've fantasized about very different things. I'm going to rabble rouse to the point that my my high school sues me.
00:12:46
Speaker
I'm going to take it to the Supreme Court.
00:12:51
Speaker
ah So it sounds like a we're about ready for for arguments to begin. i think we've explored the facts of the case, yes. Yeah. All right.
00:13:02
Speaker
ah Well, Jarrett will be the petitioner, and I've got seven minutes on the clock, so ah it'll start as soon as you do. All right. Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the court, the Hazelwood School District is an educational entity charged with protecting the students that we serve and our own ability to continue this mission.
00:13:24
Speaker
We created the Spectrum as an educational endeavor designed to teach our students about how proper ethical journalism is conducted. A strong press is paramount to the functioning of our democracy, and the school district believes it is important to do our part to develop future leaders in this field.
00:13:43
Speaker
This mission is not unique to journalism. We have the same responsibility across all the subjects we teach. In each of these subjects, our teachers and principal monitor and judge the assignments for these classes and have authority over those assignments.
00:13:58
Speaker
In this case, the assignment was to publish a student version of a newspaper that incorporated the ethical and professional standards of the journalism field. This means that they were expected to submit articles that did not dox their fellow students, violate anyone's right to privacy, or post inflammatory statements without allowing the accused to respond.
00:14:19
Speaker
The students failed to meet this bar on two of their articles, and the principal, as the editor, made an editorial decision. Under normal circumstances, the principal would have worked with the students to amend the pieces, but this was a special case where due to the end of the term, the principal declined to print the pages containing those articles.
00:14:39
Speaker
The principal understood this was a school assignment and that it was better to make sure that some form of the paper got published because the students worked hard on it instead of risking that there would be no final paper for the year.
00:14:52
Speaker
Consider, too, that the principal has to weigh the risk of publishing stories to the students and to the school district. It was reasonable for the principal to be concerned about doxing students that had been pregnant and violating their privacy.
00:15:07
Speaker
The principal has to protect these students, students who aren't at an age yet where they may understand the implications of talking to the press about personal matters. If the principal could figure out who the students were, then other students would as well, so changing their names was not enough to protect them.
00:15:25
Speaker
The principal also has a responsibility as a public servant to protect the institution, and printing inflammatory accusations about an adult in the community without their consent or response would open the school district up to legal action.
00:15:40
Speaker
Given these factors, the editorial actions of the principal are reasonable and justified. If they had not acted, complaints and potential lawsuits could force the closure of the journalism program entirely, and so striking the pages was a necessary act for the future of the program.
00:15:57
Speaker
The current students were upset, we understand that, but the principal preserved the program for future students. This is the principal's job. One may assume, naively, that simply because the principal, as the editor, was a public employee, that any denial to print what the student's author is an infringement of their rights.
00:16:18
Speaker
After all, isn't it impossible for a government employee to say what we can and can't write? But this ignores the context of the student-school relationship. Students in the charge of educators within a public school system do not enjoy all the same rights as adults do.
00:16:36
Speaker
Their interaction with the government, represented by the school and its employees, are not the same as lawmakers policing what adults can print and distribute. Schools have a responsibility to educate and protect and are given some latitude to control students in ways that don't exist anywhere else.
00:16:55
Speaker
Consider the shock of going from high school to college, where all of a sudden, no one got to tell you where to be, when to be there, or what to say. It's quite the difference, and some people can't even make that shift.
00:17:08
Speaker
Also, honestly, even without the context of the school needing to protect and care for students, this whole argument doesn't hold any water. Take PBS and NPR as examples.
00:17:20
Speaker
These are real news agencies and the editors, like the reporters, are public employees. There is no First Amendment violation for these reporters when the editors do their jobs.
00:17:31
Speaker
So even outside of schools, we can see that the complaint in this case ignores obvious facts about the responsibility of schools, the student-educator relationship, and precedent in other areas of journalism that's going on every day right now.
Discussion on Principal's Actions
00:17:48
Speaker
All of this said, we believe that the principal acted responsibly to fulfill their duties as an educator and protector of the interests of the school and its students. Thank you. I yield to questions.
00:18:00
Speaker
God, you're getting so good at playing the heel, practitioner. Very, very, God. Oh, this is total consequence of how old I am.
00:18:13
Speaker
I feel convinced by that argument. It's very upsetting to me. um Okay. Whose decision was it to make this thing for profit? We don't know that.
00:18:25
Speaker
And where did the money go? Back into the program. Right. Okay. We caught it. Yeah. This one's hard. all right. I'm to shut up and let someone else talk. this It is a public school, right? I guess I should have asked that earlier.
00:18:38
Speaker
Okay. Yeah. That makes it a little bit more. I have never felt so conflicted about one of the cases you brought before us. Right now I'm still thinking this, someone who's published stuff. This just seems like an editor, editing so far. I'll, I reserve my time. If there's no questions, I'll reserve a minute.
00:19:00
Speaker
I don't have any questions. Preserving my time. You've gobsmacked me. I don't know what to say. I'm thinking this format is hard coming up with the questions in real time because that was a very convincing argument.
00:19:13
Speaker
I'm going to be honest. i think I think just going first, it always happens. It's just like, wow, that's a really convincing argument. And then the second person goes, yeah, it's the only argument you've got so far.
00:19:24
Speaker
course it sounds good. Fair, okay. We've definitely, this this podcast has proven the recency bias. there Whatever the last thing you heard is the right thing. though i think there definitely some times where we've had cases where it's just been like, you know, the man and yeah the moment the pressure opens their mouth, it's like, fuck.
00:19:41
Speaker
Fuck you. But this is not that case. So I'm going to reserve. it All right. I'm going to reserve a minute and I'm going to put seven minutes on the clock for Nikki, who can start whenever she likes.
00:19:57
Speaker
Mr. Chief Justice. Oh, fuck. and Was that a question?
00:20:09
Speaker
I'll restart you.
00:20:14
Speaker
Whatever you're ready.
00:20:17
Speaker
Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the court. High schoolers, right? The first student newspaper on record existed in Pennsylvania in 1777.
00:20:32
Speaker
So before the first amendment, the student press is a longstanding institution of a society founded on freedom of speech and of the press. It is a pillar of a free democracy. And these ambitious students are stepping up to take on this mantle.
00:20:49
Speaker
If the school wanted a paper to be part of the curriculum and formal, you know, formal venue of the school, they could have set up a school paper that is simply photocopied and handed out in homerooms where the authors are told to discuss only sanctioned school issues and topics that would have functioned as a bullet bulletin board announcing lunch for the day and featuring a weekly interview with the principal.
00:21:18
Speaker
They did not do that. They let students staff a full paper, sent it out to a printer, and distribute it out distributed it out in the world for public consumption and participation.
00:21:32
Speaker
It was, for all purposes, a local paper. When you have students being allowed to develop and write stories, be interviewed by student journalists, make decisions about the design and the layout, then the First Amendment applies and that is protected.
00:21:49
Speaker
The First Amendment is designed to prevent the government or its agents from suppressing viewpoints that they do not like. The school board itself said it would respect the students' First Amendment rights and not restrict the content of the paper.
00:22:06
Speaker
That is the board's acknowledgement that these students have rights that ought not to be abridged. The students were thus under the impression that they could publish practically anything that was newsworthy, current, and of interest to the student body.
00:22:21
Speaker
The advisor was delegated by the school to be a part of training and practice of student expression, accompanying them in their path to adult citizenship. However, in deleting the articles, the school broke its promise and its commitment to free student press, and in doing so violated the First Amendment rights of the student journalists to bring the news to their peers and to prompt discussion and thought that is essential to education.
00:22:48
Speaker
Students have the right to express themselves even if their views are contrary to others, and even if other people are uncomfortable or even offended, as long as it's not disruptive to the school.
00:23:01
Speaker
The principal could have changed the name and left some of the details out of the story, followed by taking the opportunity to discuss and educate the students. The editorial section of the paper said that the editorials did not necessarily represent the views of the school or the school administration, so why not require a similar requirement for the paper in general?
00:23:24
Speaker
The school can require accuracy through the advisor, but cannot suppress viewpoints. The school cannot practice such absolute control over student expression. The principal used strong but vague words to describe his decision.
00:23:41
Speaker
inappropriate, personal, sensitive, unsuitable. He never bothers to define them. Instead, the school uses these amorphous words as an excuse to start censoring the students' work, chill the expression of their ideas, muffle their peers' as exposure to ideas, and to discourage the critical thinking and dissent that is an integral part of good and informed citizenship of a free society.
00:24:08
Speaker
It's easy to use the words, think of the children, to impart urgency and to smoothly deflect attention from the insidious encroachment upon our rights as a citizenry.
00:24:21
Speaker
We start with the children because they need to be protected. They are vulnerable. And it is because of their vulnerability that the government can step in and softly shepherd their rights away in the night.
00:24:33
Speaker
Because it's easy to soothe the populace into accepting that protection necessitates government oversight. That protection requires gentle elision of the principles of free press, and thus this protection tenderly ushers the future of democracy into decline.
00:24:52
Speaker
I will take questions. I have questions. What views were being silenced? ah Frank discussions of sexuality, of contraception or lack thereof, and ah the decisions and situations that can come as a result of sexual behavior.
00:25:12
Speaker
I guess we need some context. What were the actual articles about? ah Pregnancy and divorce of parents. um And you had said that They shouldn't be able to silence anything about them.
00:25:27
Speaker
But the principal approves all of the papers. Should the principal just not have the right to approve them at all? So the principal can certainly ah double check things like spelling, grammar.
00:25:42
Speaker
And if there are concerns, discuss them with the students rather than just deleting articles wholesale. I was under the impression from earlier that there was a discussion.
00:25:54
Speaker
After the fact. After the students ah discovered that the newspaper had cut out their stories. Gotcha. This whole thing is just so fascinating to me.
00:26:08
Speaker
um Would you say that a high school principal an agent of the state? In a public school, Yes. What are their enforcement powers?
00:26:20
Speaker
ah To exercise control over ah the students, student expression, and um student rights against things like searches and and essentially a lot of the same basic human rights.
00:26:37
Speaker
Is there any limit to which a high school principal could prevent the students from publishing something in this paper?
00:26:50
Speaker
What would be an example of something they would not be allowed to print? Yeah. I was going to ask a similar question. ah So something that is that is in clear violation of the law um that that couldn't be um ameliorated by simple simple editing or something like threats, for instance, direct specific threats.
00:27:15
Speaker
Do the students have a right to expose the school to liability? ah Once again, i think ah the school can always require the students to print a disclaimer um that this does not reflect you know the views of the school or or the administration.
00:27:35
Speaker
See, that's an interesting line. That's interesting. What if his rationale was that the journalism itself wasn't up to snuff? For example, the the divorce one where they say that the parent should have been asked to respond and that the you know reason for maybe pulling it is that the quality of the journalism is not up to snuff.
00:27:58
Speaker
ah If it's in accordance with but specified journalistic standards, certainly. But once again, the first strategy, the first course of action would be to engage in editing and fixing the paper ah rather than just suppressing the story entirely.
00:28:16
Speaker
And if this wasn't like the last two days before the semester oven was over, do you think that would have happened? It's actually hard to say. the The principal just went ahead and deleted ah two full pages of the newspaper ah rather than seeking to make appropriate edits or trying to figure something out with the layout. Just deleted the pages of not only the two articles that he expressed worries about, but deleting basically seven stories, I think it was.
00:28:48
Speaker
Did the principal at least replace the content with something fanciful, like a reprint of that week's Marmaduke? I don't think so. Time. no time.
00:28:59
Speaker
yeah is Is the question more like the guy just doesn't know how to use the editing software, and so it was easier to just remove the pages? Oh, God, I'm not good with computers.
00:29:11
Speaker
I deleted the whole dang spread. I believe I have a minute of reserved time. going freestyle rap. Have you been writing this whole time? That's exciting. Sure. Yeah. ah All right. First of all, yeah.
00:29:25
Speaker
The principal has never deleted stuff before, as far as we know. It's just this one time. It's just the circumstance of it being the end of the school. that's That's it. ah Second, the ah respondent brought up the school board and their promises. the The school board can say what it wants whenever it wants, and it can make changes whenever it wants.
00:29:45
Speaker
Thinking that adults saying one thing entitles you forever to say what you want is the most high schooler view of the world ever. And when did the school board say this? Was it the current slate of elected officials or potentially a previous slate of elected officials?
00:30:01
Speaker
Unclear. Finally, after being so concerned about the students' freedom of expression, schools have dress codes. No First Amendment violation there.
00:30:12
Speaker
We all agree that students at schools are playing with different rules. This case is dumb. um I was going to ask, ah why did the principal even print anything at all?
00:30:24
Speaker
but and Why didn't they just say that, know, we don't have enough time to properly edit this? Because there were four salvageable pages that students worked hard on and the goal was to do what he could.
00:30:37
Speaker
There was $820 of advertising at stake here. o It's actually not clear that there's any advertising in the paper at all. There was nothing at stake here.
00:30:51
Speaker
And that is my time.
00:30:56
Speaker
Okay. So I don't know about you all, but I remember when I was 16, 17 years old, I lived to provoke the adult authority figures in my life. Literally, the bigger the reaction I got from them, the happier I was.
00:31:10
Speaker
And the more I could keep my hands clean and point to how virtuous and chivalrous my behavior was while riling them up, all the better. This is so something I would do as a high school student. And the proof is in the pudding because at any time period whatsoever where the ACLU is available as like, you know, something a 17-year-old knows is a resource that they can call on to avenge them.
00:31:35
Speaker
They have access to a Kinko's or a Staples or whatever regional copy center you happen to grow up nearby. They could get this message out. And if that doesn't exist, they live with MySpace. Like presumably this happened in the last 30 years.
00:31:49
Speaker
There's like so many different ways you can get out the word about how Becky got Bregner whatever. Like if you got to be that petty Tumblr or why Dave's dad got divorced. Like, you know, if you have to get the word out about that, you go to Tumblr.
00:32:03
Speaker
The fact that none of those recourses were taken and they went straight to suing and escalated it to the Supreme Court tells me that there was nothing at play here except ego, pettiness and vengeance.
00:32:15
Speaker
Flawless. Just pointing out that it was the school that escalated it to the Supreme Court. Wait, how? Wait. The students sued and went to district court. The district court was like, no Okay. yeah So the students were like, well, then we're going to take it to the appeals court. Okay.
00:32:32
Speaker
And then the appeals court was like, actually, yes. The appeals court was having a steady regimen of spray paint that day and put the case up. The appeals court was like, actually, we agree with the students. And the school district was like, no dog, Supreme Court.
00:32:46
Speaker
Got it. Okay. So this, this was the best of three deciding round. yes i should really know how the appeals process works better, but that's why you demoted me from chief justice. I understand now. Um,
00:33:01
Speaker
That's okay. I've been to murder once. All I'm saying is that these kids seem really fueled by, pettiness. I both respect that and also realize that it is not like proper grounds for a first amendment case.
00:33:14
Speaker
Yeah. Like on the one hand, I'm, I'm impressed by the students ah punkness, if you will, to just go and print the stuff. Yeah. That was, that was straight punk. But on the other hand, like, man, I, I don't know if this is a first amendment violation.
00:33:30
Speaker
Like if the principal followed them to Kinko's and said to the clerk, like, stop those rapscallions. They're not allowed to make color copies, much less a thousand black and white copies for whatever pocket change they embezzled from the student newspaper fund. Amazing. like Right. Stop these children. Like if that, if they had followed him to Kinko's and stopped them from reproducing this message and or they had like, you know, I don't know, yeah issued some injunction to get them from taking down their MySpace to talk about this issue.
00:33:58
Speaker
Like if they had stopped them from talking about it whatsoever in any context, but a newspaper endorsed by the school, sold by the school to the local, like, yeah, that principal has editorial powers. Absolutely.
00:34:12
Speaker
And oh my God, I've betrayed everything I held dear as a 17-year-old man. If they were just working for a local actual like newspaper and this happened, they would what are they like that this wouldn't go up the chain. I think it's like, oh, but it's school. but like this is They would all get fired. This just happens in journalism.
00:34:34
Speaker
yeah I mean, the principal probably could have done a better job of handling it, maybe not maybe bring someone who knows how to lay out a newspaper to fix it so other things aren't deleted by accident. We should have licensed Barmaduke.
00:34:47
Speaker
like they could see I can see an issue there, but I have a hard time with this being a First Amendment violation. It seems overblown for this particular situation. Yeah, I think the principle was acting within his power.
00:35:02
Speaker
um There's no... Yeah. The public school, they tried to, be maybe because it was a public school, were like, oh, we can get them on... ah public rights or whatever, but I don't i don't think so.
00:35:15
Speaker
Because there's money involved, maybe they were thinking that. Like, oh, there's money exchanging hands. you know that That should... yeah out yeah We're trying to get it out there. But but yeah, I agree with just Adam.
00:35:26
Speaker
ah you know If they had followed them or sent the cops after them when they tried to do it themselves, ah then yeah, that is absolutely a suppression of their rights. but The principal is not an agent of the state here.
00:35:36
Speaker
They're your jerk boss who doesn't let you do whatever you want to do.
00:35:42
Speaker
Yeah. And I would imagine someone can make the case that the principal is doing what he can in defense of like the school. It's like, great. Cause what if something inflammatory comes out and one of those students says, Hey, this paper violated my privacy, which is now the school violated my privacy or the, the parent of that kid raises a legal fuss right now.
00:36:09
Speaker
You're the principal here screwed because if I do this, Again, First Amendment violation, but then the school gets sued if I just let this crappy reporting get published. Yeah. I was ready to go into this episode with a strong, strident opinion of children should be allowed to do anything they want until they're 17 with no legal culpability.
00:36:28
Speaker
I've not thought about that standpoint just a little bit, and then I'm glad didn't say it out loud. Oh, shit. Yeah.
00:36:36
Speaker
I thought you were First Amendment absolutist, Adam. No, like I thought I was. You're hard. I thought you were. and Unless it comes to 16-year-olds who are publishing literal slander about their peers.
00:36:51
Speaker
And their peers' family members. so like Really, before the ACLU got involved, i really think like this could have been even a conversation over the summer. Like, hey, I know school's out, but if you if you fix it, I'll... publish it next September or something. Right. I feel like adults could have handled situations better here, but I just, I'm hard time. Tell me that you're an educator without telling me you're an educator.
00:37:13
Speaker
I'm an educator of adults, supposedly. Right. constantly going to the aclu about my bullshit
00:37:25
Speaker
so yeah um i agree with the heritage foundation on this one and i mean i can think of ways that a school would be like infringing on a student's first amendment rights but i just i don't i have a hard time buying if the school had gone out of their way to stop these kids from getting this message out by any means necessary like privately on the internet, talking about it, publishing it independent of the school newspaper, hundred percent first room violation. Like also weird obsession by the principal. Yeah. I mean, that wouldn't, that wouldn't happen. mean, like first amendment, I'm thinking like, Oh, you can't wear this religious thing or something like that. Like, I feel like, okay, in a school context, that's a first amendment violation, but like, this just seems like a class where the
00:38:12
Speaker
Everything got turned in at the last minute. And the principal who was like, oh that's going to get us sued. You couldn't get a crossword puzzle together, so you had to go it out your pregnant classmates. It's like, and like yeah, yeah maybe maybe the maybe the public school in town shouldn't be outing the pregnant teenagers and the bad father.
00:38:31
Speaker
Yeah. without without them like reviewing able to respond right in the interest of making this case as objective as possible we've left out all the details about how these kids were painted as satanists all lurid details of the case have been left out for our consideration this is just cyberbullying before cyberbullying they just didn't have myspace to or what have you yeah what do kids use today i don't even know TikTok?
00:38:57
Speaker
Yeah, TikTok. Podcast.
00:39:02
Speaker
For cyberbullying? Jesus. Long form cyberbullying. Hey kids, thanks for listening. This is an educational podcast. I love the idea of like...
00:39:16
Speaker
i love the idea of like Oh, my God, I have to cut these stories that we're going to get sued. Like, like the dad is probably going to sue me. The students, they're never going to sue. Oh, what's that? yeah <unk> Far more reactionary than I thought.
00:39:33
Speaker
Where are they even learning about the legal system from? Oh, it's AP history again. it's curiosity but was Was one of the moms of one of the students an ACLU lawyer? it It was just- That was my- I just wondered, like oh, was somebody's parent either a lawyer or hooked up with like the ACLU or- Because it seems like such an escalation from this seemingly little thing to get the ACLU involved. They saw monetary damages- Yeah, which what were the monetary dumps? I assume the cost of the of the copy?
00:40:11
Speaker
I don't know. or prince i actually That was never clear to me. Right. We pulled together 60 bucks to go to Kinko's and print this run, and you guys just clip it out and Marmaduke in place of these stories? That's ridiculous. actually know it's good Yeah, wait. so The original was for monetary damp. Was there something else? They wanted an injunction and monetary damages. Tell us how much monetary damages. Yeah, this just gets, like, I really want to be on the way i free speech side, but it just just keeps getting sillier.
00:40:38
Speaker
Um, let's see. i can't. What was the appeals court smoking? yeah That's what i want to know.
00:40:49
Speaker
That's the official ruling, actually. that's so they were they were originally they went to the district court seeking a declaration that their First Amendment rights had been violated, injunctive relief and monetary damages.
00:41:01
Speaker
use Can you explain injunctive relief for the audience? We want the principal summarily executed. i I think somebody's – I don't know. i'm not I'm going to stop saying that, but like that's – yes We're going to stop just short of committing the same problems that the students did. The more the details we learn, the more probable that feels to me. um ah yeah wait what So injunctive release to explain. Relief.
00:41:30
Speaker
Injunctive relief. Yeah. They wanted ah the court to like come out and like tell the school, like stop doing that or, you know, put out the paper or something. We demand that the court make the principal write their own newsletter and we get to edit it.
00:41:45
Speaker
See how the principal feels.
00:41:50
Speaker
um Yeah. And then it, you know, yeah. And I don't know anything in terms of like the amount of monetary damages, like what they were. $22 million. dollars and enough just modes and Like just boggles my mind Maybe one of the parents is the ACLU lawyer and they're suing for the cost of the ACLU lawyer. Plot twist. The principal's the dad. Right. Like somebody, somebody has found a way to make money here. we got to, we got to figure out what the economic engine is and the case becomes so much clearer.
00:42:27
Speaker
Okay. um This feels like the most unanimous, dare I say, ah case we've had in quite a minute. yeah thick yeah I keep trying to see the other side. and like a It's just hard. like it matter what is I really want to straw a man, or not straw man, steal me on the other side. and it's just ah It seems rough.
00:42:50
Speaker
In the matter of beleaguered administrator bunch versus a bunch of little shits. like We rule in favor of the administrator, who's probably clearly not getting paid enough.
00:43:03
Speaker
Yeah, the principal was probably like, things not on my bingo list for this summer going to the Supreme Court because I didn't dox three of my pregnant students.
00:43:15
Speaker
What an asshole. Put it that way. Guys, are we on the same page on this one? Did we go into arguments yet? Yeah, I think did.
00:43:27
Speaker
but sure I don't think we had arguments. I think we just had unanimous like derisive agreements. It's literally just three middle-aged men being like, can you believe those kids?
00:43:44
Speaker
Unbelievable. Millennials. I don't even think it's the kids. i think it's one of the parents. Yeah, I blame the parents and the rap music, personally. actually yep If they hadn't listened to Beastie Boys, they never would have got this idea about supremacy clause or whatever.
00:43:58
Speaker
don't even know. um i Guys, i I think we're all agreed. this is This is silly. It's very silly. This is arch silliness. this is the This is the kind of lighthearted shenanigans that the government dealt with when we were kids.
00:44:16
Speaker
ah Yeah, back simpler times, right? halon Halcyon time between the end of Vietnam and the beginning of whatever it is we're going through right now. These were the salad days.
00:44:27
Speaker
Yeah, indeed. You know, we're going to hear the real decision. It's going to be they ruled the students and the principal lost his job. That's the beginning of war. We're going to be like, oh, damn, we're idiots or something.
00:44:42
Speaker
And that child, Abraham Lincoln. I was going to say. It was four score and seven years ago.
00:44:52
Speaker
right so I guess it's a unanimous, ah pretty unanimous decision. I'm not sure not sure who's i think who's authoring this decision. It's just the whole court is just like, summarily, the decision is like, oh, fuck off.
00:45:07
Speaker
um It turns out the entire neighborhood did not notice the absence of that week's newsletter until you their lives unabated.
00:45:19
Speaker
right. Well, ah we have the results. So this case was argued October 13, 1987, and decided January 13, 1988.
00:45:30
Speaker
And so you know people were talking about you know how to get the word out. ah During oral arguments, one of the lawyers was talking about mimeographs. And I was like, what?
00:45:41
Speaker
um but Wait, what is mimeograph? What's a mimeograph? A mimeograph? Explain for the audience, not for us. we We know what it is, but the audience needs to know what that is. So it's, oh gosh. So it's this, it's like a copy machine, but it's not like electronic. Like it's,
00:45:58
Speaker
It's like ink and it would be like purple and it would have this very distinct like odor. um And it was, I think it was around, well, I don't know specifically when it was around, but basically once like photocopiers came out.
00:46:14
Speaker
I've literally never heard of this before. This is an analog photocopier. This is crazy. Yeah, basically. Yeah, where you get like ink and a template, like. They were like, yeah, the lawyer arguing for the kids yeah because like, they could get a mimeographed page, you know they you know, and send it out to the school or something like that. And it was, um yeah, like you never had the teacher who like would still call it mimeograph, even though, you know, you're looking at the Xerox machine. Like that's that's what that is. Yeah. No, I was born in the 20th century.
00:46:45
Speaker
wait You know, I'm older than you and the answer is still no. Yeah. ah and It is basically a ah low cost stencil based printing press. Yeah.
00:47:01
Speaker
Incredible. God, I've learned so much today. There's just a Reddit dedicated to When you talk about like, like layout setting, you know, like, oh, why didn't the principal just like change the layout?
00:47:13
Speaker
Well, you had to build, had to make a whole new stencil. Well, the printer printed it. I don't know. i still I still, to this day, just imagine him on his computer, just like, oh, just, you know. Just desperately searching Usenet for the latest.
00:47:28
Speaker
like this moment Yeah. it was you know It was like the last thing he did that day. It was just like, normally this is a rubber stamp that all the secretaries had gone home. and It was just the last thing was going to do for the day. And then he read those and he was like.
00:47:40
Speaker
Oh, fuck. Oh, no. Oh, no. It's just not what's on a cup of coffee. It's just like, oh, no. Let me figure this out. Light the cigarette. It's the Even better. I have an idea. Like, they actually printed them, and before they went to delivery, he snuck into the warehouse and just physically ripped the papers out. So if there was, like, just written missing.
00:47:59
Speaker
bucket of whiteout and a roller. Yeah.
00:48:06
Speaker
Yeah, so that was, uh, that was... Yeah. So that that was the ah sort of the technological background. um It was no MySpace, no TikTok, to be clear.
00:48:22
Speaker
Okay. yeah i am know and the i are the kids now yeah if you If you wanted to slander your classmates, you had to join journalism one, pass it, come back for journalism to the next year and then write it in the paper. Those kids climbed a hill to slander their fellow students and someone's dad. And when they were stymied, they truly felt they were silenced. I understand that.
00:48:42
Speaker
but Back in these days, like you didn't go to Spotify to listen to Slayer. The only way that you knew Slayer existed is the kid in the jean jacket with the patches gave you a tape one day. should like yeah i should correct myself.
00:48:55
Speaker
ah The students that participated in the articles, like they weren't slandered. They were, they were interviewed and they were like, oh yeah, I'll say, I'll talk about my pregnancy and I'll talk about my dad.
00:49:06
Speaker
Oh, yeah. I think, what did she say? It was something like, oh, my dad never spent time with the family. He was just with his poker buddies or something like that. Oh, here we are repeating this letter.
00:49:19
Speaker
All these people are dead. It's fine. so This is back in the days mimeographs. That was like at least 100 years ago. You'd never heard of mimeographs. 80% of this podcast ah cast right now was alive when when this case happened yeah is 87 i was yeah like i six years old yeah it was decided it was argued in 87 and then the opinion came out in eighty that's right actually i remember reading at the wall street journal at the time when i was four years old
00:49:55
Speaker
I was negative, like negative math. You were negative math. Don't explain Yeah. Settle down. It's fine.
00:50:06
Speaker
So Justice White delivered the opinion and SCOTUS reversed the appeals court and held that the principal acted reasonably in deleting the articles from the issue.
Supreme Court's Decision and Implications
00:50:17
Speaker
Of course. Yeah.
00:50:21
Speaker
The Supreme Court had some pretty questionable takes in the past, but no, they got it right finally. I think this is one of the first times we've been on this show, you've read the decision, and I'm like, yeah, yeah. Obviously.
00:50:35
Speaker
ah You were fully prepared going into this just to be like, how did they fuck this up? Yeah, I was honestly waiting for like the shooter to like, where where's the bass drop going to come in? Oh yeah, oh yeah, unanimously like executed the president, the principal. No, they were all like, no, the principal was, it was fine.
00:50:53
Speaker
um There was a lot of discussion of a previous case dealing with student speech in school. We're going to skip over that for now to kind of focus on on this issue. But basically, the court held that students in public schools still maintain their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression, but they don't automatically have the same extent of First Amendment rights of adults in other settings.
00:51:16
Speaker
So there needs to be consideration of, quote, the special characteristics of the school environment, unquote, And schools are there for, quote, a basic educational mission, unquote.
00:51:28
Speaker
So school boards can regulate speech that is inappropriate. And then they they go into depth saying, you know, the school policies describe the paper as part of the curriculum of this Journalism 2 class.
00:51:41
Speaker
They apply the skills learned in Journalism 1. Journalism 2 was taught by a teacher during regular classroom hours. The students got grades. They got academic credits for their participation. They had to use a bibliograph.
00:51:53
Speaker
yeah yeah No, they sent it to an external printer um to do all the everything, you know. um Let someone else literally get their hands dirty. Yeah. ah Maybe a graph machine.
00:52:06
Speaker
So yeah, like that, it was, you know, was basically a, this was a class and, you you know, the regular teacher exercise a lot of control over the paper because the teacher selected the editors, scheduled publication dates, decided how many pages were in any issue, assigned story ideas to the students, advise students on the development of the stories, reviewed the quotes, edited stories, selected and and edited the letters to the editor,
00:52:32
Speaker
dealt with the printing company and a lot, and just did a lot of these without any consultation with the students. Therefore, the teacher was the final authority with almost every aspect of the paper, including its content.
00:52:44
Speaker
And then, you know, the draft went to the principal for review before publication. And they were like, the court was like saying, Hey, when the school board said they wouldn't restrict expression within responsible journalism,
00:52:58
Speaker
That means that the school board actually does have control. They were just kind of being nice to the students about, you know, giving them some, some grounds, but like they didn't have to. And so, you know, um this whole thing about the students saying they thought that they could publish practically anything, that was a direct quote, um was not credible.
00:53:18
Speaker
um You know, you students can have some authority over the contents of the paper, but that's within the confines of the journalism class and teaching of leadership skills in the classroom. They're not giving up school control over the paper.
00:53:32
Speaker
You know, so school officials can regulate the paper in, quote, any reason reasonable manner. And, you know, other people would reasonably perceive the publication to, you know, bear the imprimatur of the school.
00:53:48
Speaker
And therefore, you know, as long as they're supervised by faculty, they're intended to impart specific knowledge and skills to the students, it's curricular. ah the students The teachers are there to make sure that the students learn the lessons And also have to take care that the audience is not exposed to inappropriate material for their level of maturity and and that, you know, somebody writes or says something that that's not erroneously attributed to the school.
00:54:16
Speaker
So the school gets to set standards. They can adjust the the the content to the emotional and maturity of the audience. They can refuse to sponsor student speech that could be perceived to advocate poor conduct like drug and alcohol use.
00:54:30
Speaker
And refuse to be associated with anything other than political neutrality. And it's, this is an editorial issue. It's not a, you know, it's not a violation of the first amendment to like, you know, to be like, Hey, where you're in school doing school things. You need to like keep this paper appropriate for school things. Or stop saying things. It's going to get all of a sued. dad yeah So that was the, ah that was the main opinion. There was a dissent.
00:55:00
Speaker
That was very fiery. um so at first 17-year-old Supreme Court justice in his career. Where basically it was like, no, the students here, they they roll in the class wanting a civics lesson.
00:55:16
Speaker
um They have the statement of policy talking about the First Amendment and the school board was like, yep, sure. First Amendment, you guys can, we'll you know we'll respect that. And then you know Basically, the school, and this was in Justice Brennan's view, um engaged in in censorship. you know School is supposed to prepare kids to- Brennan's with softy.
00:55:40
Speaker
Hey kids, want to learn about the real life intersection of business interests and what you perceive to be your rights? That's basically how he left it. he was like He was like, oh, this is a poor lesson in civics, basically. Or like the students got a lesson in civics, but not the ones that they expected. i would say it's extremely realistic.
00:55:56
Speaker
Yeah, this so this was a very good lesson. Yeah. so Yeah, so he was talking about like converting our public schools into the enclaves of totalitarianism that strangles the free mind at its source. Blah, blah, blah. What a nerd. Did he read what the articles were about? like It seems a little over the top. it was It was, no, like, it was, like, democracy hinged on this. Man, the fourth and fifth paragraphs that went into graphic detail about how the girls got pregnant was uncalled for put it in excise. But the rest of it was above board and journalistic. I mean, the illustrations probably weren't required. The illustrations, but... We confiscated those for hilarious time. His point was that, like, the school could have done something else other than cut out all of these...
00:56:44
Speaker
articles while just trying to make these fine tune edits.
00:56:51
Speaker
It is. Yeah. So I'm with Mike that had the school year not been, you know, ending that day, like they probably would have been an opportunity to like clean it up, take out the salacious stuff, make it a little less incriminating, make it more anonymized.
00:57:07
Speaker
yeah I have to give the administrator the benefit of the doubt on this one. There was an element of time pressure, basically, like it had to go to the printer or there wasn't, right? I think Jarrett said something like that. And it turned out there was a miscommunication as well, because it turns out that where somebody's name had been used, it had been taken out, but the principal didn't know it at the time, according to...
00:57:28
Speaker
you know, the record we found. Although I was having a shade of second doubts when you said that all of the interview subjects were like privy to what was being written and like volunteered all this information.
00:57:40
Speaker
I thought this was like a, like a nasty mean girls hit piece, but if it was like, let me tell you all about it. I don't know. Yeah, no, they the students were interviewed. It was, you know, we interviewed the student about her pregnancy and this is what she said.
00:57:55
Speaker
Let me go on record as saying that I regret betraying my teenage self and wish I could take it back. growing You're going to, you're going to go to bed and then it's just going to be like teenage you, like complaining that you've sold out to the man. I'm to start a zine tomorrow.
00:58:10
Speaker
I think that every day until my paycheck cashes. you that Too real. Stop. Too real.
00:58:20
Speaker
So, ah yeah. ah So according to the the main opinion, it was like, you know, yeah, like school's got a school. And um the dissent was like the for the very first amendment is at stake. This is censorship and violating these rights. They could have done so much more.
00:58:39
Speaker
And, you know, and so it was very like judges really like they they write. It's all just so like. I'm sure you kids are real zine.
00:58:50
Speaker
yeah I feel like the the breakdown of the justices tells us which one which justice was in the journalism program when they were in high school and was told that their papers were not appropriate.
00:59:02
Speaker
it was a 5-3 decision, by the way. Brennan 100% caught squirrely from the football team. 1930, whatever boys preparatory academy you went to. I'll show you. going to be a Supreme Court justice someday.
00:59:18
Speaker
I'll publish defamatory stories about all your dads.
00:59:24
Speaker
You took the more virtuous course. it basically so I just Googled it real quick and all the articles that come up are like, this is when schools got the right to censor. It's just like, what?
00:59:34
Speaker
So yeah, so basically it goes into this whole, and I'm not going to go all into it, but is the school newspaper a public forum? And the court was like, no Didn't schools have the right to inflict literal corporal punishment on kids until like two years ago? Like, what are we even talking about? It's on the state. Some states, it's still illegal. All right, so we're going to censor your entire newspaper and whip your ass.
01:00:00
Speaker
Yeah, if you look at sort of the legal scholarship, this is a sense. So there's a lot of discussion of there's a there's a previous case, Tinker versus Des Moines Independent School District.
01:00:12
Speaker
It affirmed students' right to express their views at school. But in that case, that was the Vietnam War was happening and students were wearing black armbands in school so like ah in protest. But like they weren't doing or saying, they just showed up to school with these black armbands and got in trouble on the court. about Dishing how Kirsten got pregnant. Yeah.
01:00:30
Speaker
Yeah. and Like the vibe is totally different there. Like that's like, this isn't even the same, like port of town here. So people did try to like, you know, there was a lot of discussion of Tinker, like, Oh, these students have rights and whatever.
01:00:43
Speaker
And, um, you know, and they thought that Tinker would sort of open that door, but, uh, no, basically this case is seen as sort of a step away from Tinker and as a victory for school administrators and a blow to the, uh, to the student press.
01:00:59
Speaker
So it's, I mean, but I feel like we've kind of come across this on our own, like when we were were in schools, right? Because like under the court's reasoning, school officials can place restrictions on like, you know, the theater shows, assemblies, how you use school facilities for things, you know, maybe even the use of the school name or logo. And I feel like, don't know, I've run into that where it's like, oh, i'm during school time or on school grounds, you can't blah, blah, blah. But like- Oh boy, I get to recount of my favorite high school anecdotes. oh i was editor of the high school and
01:01:31
Speaker
I was editor of the high school yearbook and I decided that I was going to print whatever the club and sport team leaders wanted to print as their little you know love notes to their teams, et cetera. I was hauled into the office and and accused of sabotaging the entire yearbook allowed inside jokes to be published and that some of them might be hurtful or defamatory or otherwise you know inappropriate.
01:01:53
Speaker
And when I said, hey man, I was just printing what I was given as the editor. I looked at it for anything blatantly inappropriate and did not see it. So I printed what I was given. And I was told, you know who else was said to just follow in orders? The Nazis.
01:02:09
Speaker
Wow. Clearly can't make up something so ridiculous. Although I'm kind of seeing the connection, Adam. This is, a lot's fallen into place.
01:02:20
Speaker
And Jarrett, you know who I'm talking about. You can attest that that is exactly what something that you would say. oh Oh, yeah, 100%. I wrote a play for the class play competition that one of the characters was the literal devil.
01:02:35
Speaker
ah And um a student or students complained on religious grounds that it was a violation of their rights that the school was putting on a production that glorified the devil.
01:02:49
Speaker
And we did eventually get to put that play on. I thought it was great. The audience thought it sucked. Yeah. was it Spoken like a sure artist. Yeah. There was, uh, there was about 5% of the audience that got it, you know, that's what, that's what I was going for.
01:03:05
Speaker
ah but, uh, but it really wasn't, I was saying they they're Satanists now. Those five students guilty. Yeah.
01:03:16
Speaker
ah Yeah. So, i've yeah, I've certainly ah I've certainly hit it at no point that I think to myself, this is a violation of my First Amendment rights and I'm going to sue you to the Supreme Court.
01:03:28
Speaker
Oh, you should have, though. Can you imagine? Yeah, we can talk about you on your podcast. yeah Yeah. There would have been like there would have been like quotes from the play like in the court record. but Yeah, I never thought to escalate it beyond, man, that was an irritating conversation.
01:03:45
Speaker
Right. I mean, I guess in high school, I was clearly, I was just lazier than these students. I mean, it's a different time. Like you had video games. Yeah. it's stay True. But 1987, these kids had gumption to even like reach out to the ACLU. Like they had to write a physical letter.
01:04:04
Speaker
That's incredible. i wonder if one of the parents of the students was the, you know, like, I wonder how much the students were dragged along. Yeah. I do wonder if the monetary damages that they were talking about included lawyers fees. Now that I think about it, that's what was saying earlier. Like, yeah, like, yeah, it cost us all this money for lawyers to hire, you know, to go after you. So, but yeah, I don't know.
01:04:31
Speaker
Uh, I mean, I love i love these kids or who are my elders.
01:04:38
Speaker
They're dead now, yeah. you <unk> They're Gen Xers, right? No, they're millennials. No, no, no, no. They were high school millennials.
01:04:51
Speaker
yeah yeah High school and late 80s. Well, graduating high school, presumably in the late 80s, they were Gen Xers. So we already forgot about them. They're even recoiling at the Grim Reaper together. That was incredible. Oh, boy. Yeah. A bunch of Gen Xers, punk rock. I love this. I love that they did this.
01:05:10
Speaker
I don't agree with them. And wonder... They were either the most punk rock kids in the school or they were the nerdiest kids in the school. like guess see grade Yeah, Certainly maybe the most idealistic, which I guess is not surprising for for journalism students. The Supreme Court took care of that.
01:05:28
Speaker
here Yeah, but if they did get advertising, I do wonder if that... I don't think they were. and i was There's numbers in there. like that the The school took in a little bit of money, but it was like, I don't know, a third of like what it actually cost to print it. Yeah.
01:05:46
Speaker
It just would have been interesting. actually have the figures on that. Hold on. Oh, yeah. Do you have them in 2025 dollars? Yes. No, not 2025 dollars, but 1983 dollars. cost over the entire school year.
01:05:59
Speaker
three dollars three it cost over the entire school year $4,668.50 to publish the paper. they had sales to the community, $1,166.84. in 2025 bucks, it was like, it like, 15,000 bucks.
01:06:11
Speaker
then what was it was like yeah fifteen thousand bucks and then what was that that you said one thousand they're losing money like one way in thesec yeah the school's losing and they were more to the intro consultation Yeah, that this wasn't like a money-making operate. like This was like a school exercise. It's about principal, man.
01:06:41
Speaker
The taxpayer was paying for the ah true for the students to be a part of a program. yeah i ah you know I desperately try to come up with, like so what's this one? you know like Why did we bring you this case? Well, number one, like any case that has First Amendment implications, I think is going to be a fun case to talk about.
01:07:01
Speaker
ah But like there is a in in you know Having gone through a lot of cases now, trying to decide which cases we want to do or we don't want to do, there is sort of this carved out section of the law that is just for students.
01:07:15
Speaker
Mm-hmm. They are a different entity in the eyes of the law. And I don't remember learning that when I was a student. They were telling me about all the things I would inherit when I became an adult. But until I became an adult and left school, I was, you know, in the eyes of the law, you are a charge, right? you As evidence by this the kids get agitated as soon as they realize they have special legal class.
01:07:44
Speaker
They start agitating for special rights. And in so doing, they make sure that ah no, actually, they don't. And neither does anyone else. They fly too close to the sun and get their wigs burnt off by Chief Justice White, was it?
01:08:02
Speaker
Let me go back. The IRL. Justice White. Although I will say um so apparently after this, there were seven states that wrote laws that were basically like, nah, fuck that. The kids get free press.
01:08:15
Speaker
um Which state? California, Minnesota, Massachusetts. So yeah, California. and then um ah ca And so California did its law.
01:08:27
Speaker
And then um I think five states followed California's example. So Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Oregon. Arkansas, Arkansas. And Massachusetts already had longstanding law like before all this. There only four students in Arkansas and three of them agreed that they should have free speech.
01:08:45
Speaker
And five of them were pregnant.
01:08:50
Speaker
um And I think Mass already had its own law. And then like after this case came down, I think there was the Supreme Judicial Court like heard a case where they're like, no, we still, you know, no, y'all get free press or something like that.
01:09:05
Speaker
I have some other thoughts about this case, but i'm to be honest with you. like at the end, it's like it just feels so very like, ah like i get it. Right idea.
01:09:16
Speaker
if When I was that age, I had the same you know gumption. What I desperately want to do, and I just haven't had the time to do this, is Google around and see if anybody's like followed up with these folks, especially if they've since had children who have like gone through high school and, uh, and just been like, like, well, how do you feel about it now?
01:09:39
Speaker
Has your ah perspective shifted at all? Uh, and then the other thing is, uh, is I think we just need to pour one out, ah for journalism in general while we're here.
Reflection on Journalism Then and Now
01:09:52
Speaker
Uh, because, uh, you know, that was a thing in 1983. It's your journalism. Journalism was a thing. in yeah it is there Yeah. Sure. and Sure. We pretty much have South Park and that's it.
01:10:04
Speaker
Yeah. It feels, uh, feels, feels less good. Feel less good about it. ah Seven months of Colbert and and South Park when they decided to make up. so Was this 87 or 83? I feel like I've heard both dates. Um, like yeah, it was, the case was argued in 87. Um, but I think the, uh,
01:10:22
Speaker
It was all the school year 1983. That took a while. Man, that was a significant portion of those students' lives after school. All good pursuit of justice. yeah For the ones that went on to a four-year university following this, they were graduating college and like, oh, I can't make it to graduation. The Supreme Court is ruling on my case.
01:10:46
Speaker
not that Not that respondents you know, go. It's just the lawyer. mean, we've all missed graduations because of court related things. So of course,
01:10:56
Speaker
uh, I'm such a nerd that I've skipped class to go, ah look at it, watch a Supreme court argument. Um, this is years ago.
01:11:08
Speaker
As part of her advocacy for student press freedom, Kathy Kohlmeyer often travels to schools and conferences to speak about her experience with censorship and press freedom. That's May of last year.
01:11:19
Speaker
Wait, what? Yeah. yeah You know what? Good for her. Good for her. Right? Good for her. to Get her on the podcast. What's her phone number? Let's let's get her in right now. like Anyway, this episode about the press, we'd like to thank our sponsor, Ground News, for today. are
01:11:40
Speaker
Oh, wow. At any given time, there were anywhere from 25 to 40 girls that were pregnant. ah How is that? Okay. I am more. Maybe they should have replaced the journalism too with sex ed. Yeah, right. sorry.
01:11:58
Speaker
Do better. better More certain than ever. This is puritanical cattiness. Wow. That's so many. How many kids were in the school though? 40, 48. forty forty eight yeah
01:12:13
Speaker
Did we get it? We got it. ah One take. ah Good justicing, everybody. Nailed it. And thank you once again to our justices. ah Justice Adam.
01:12:26
Speaker
Thank you for taking my opinions worth anything. Justice Chris. yeah Happy to be here. And Chief Justice Mike. My bill is in the mail.
01:12:41
Speaker
And of course, to my co-host, Jarrett. Yay. This is Nikki signing off. that that that
01:12:52
Speaker
ah Thanks, everybody. Catch you later.
01:12:56
Speaker
And there you have it. The Mike court held that the school can exercise control over the content of the school newspaper. That's it for this episode. But before we go, thanks again to my co-host and to our justices.
01:13:11
Speaker
The music in this episode was written by Studio Columna and Toby Smith and provided by Pixabay. Research was done by me. Audio mixing and producing was done by Jared.
01:13:23
Speaker
Thanks for listening. Please subscribe, rate, and comment so other people can find us. For complete episode information, including references, please check out our website at relitigated.com.
01:13:36
Speaker
You can also catch us on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Threads, and Blue Sky. Please help us spread the word. Until next time, I'm Nikki, and this has been Relitigated. Bye.