FALLBROOK — Free-speech advocates are seeing a recent settlement of a lawsuit that challenged Fallbrook High School’s censorship of its student newspaper as a triumph that could send ripples throughout the country.
After last month’s settlement, school administrators nationwide will think twice before killing an article in their student paper just because they don’t like it, student-press advocates said.
The Fallbrook Union High School District’s attorneys have long maintained that administrators stepped in when they thought one article contained falsehoods, and when they suspected another article may have been written clandestinely by an adult.
School officials have an obligation to supervise student journalists and exert a certain degree of control over what is printed in student publications, the attorneys have said.
Advocates of student-press freedoms argue that California law is designed specifically to limit that control — even if students rarely challenge administrators who censor them.
“School attorneys are regularly advising their clients to go ahead and censor the newspaper because the risk of adverse consequences is remote,” said Frank LoMonte, executive director of the Student Press Law Center in Arlington, Va. “The Fallbrook case is a two-by-four between their eyes, telling them the consequences are potentially great. … The settlement is still very new, but I guarantee you we will be citing this settlement as a cautionary tale to other school districts about the consequences of overreaching.”