As a result of a legal settlement at a California high school, school administrators are on notice to stop censoring student speech.
After settling an 18-month legal battle, Fallbrook Union High School District must pay nearly $28,000 as a result of a principal violating the speech rights of student journalists and unfairly retaliating against the high school’s newspaper advisor. In addition, the Fallbrook administration is obligated to issue letters praising the student journalists as part of the lawsuit settlement.
In 2008, Fallbrook high school teacher Dave Evans was removed by the principal as the newspaper advisor a day after Evans warned the school board that parents and students were preparing to sue the district for the principal's censorship of a news article about the dismissal of the superintendent and an editorial critical of the federal government’s abstinence-only sex education program. The principal, Rod King, also cancelled the journalism program, which had just captured second place in the American Scholastic Press Association national competition.
In 2006, I authored a law that prohibits censorship of student press by