The general assembly in Indiana is considering a bill, HB 1169, that would extend the ability of administrators to punish student off-campus speech. As Student Press Law Center executive director (and my boss) Frank LoMonte summarized on the SPLC's blog:

House Bill 1169, pushed by the special-interest lobbyists...

In November, Judge Richard Posner of the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals gave a speech where he lamented that courts were no longer giving substantial deference to the decisions of educators because, in his words, judges "don't have any systematic knowledge of the education process."

As quoted in

When a student judiciary starts to weigh in on the rights a student newspaper should have on campus, you can bet an awkward education in the First Amendment is going to follow. Last night, students at the University of Virginia got that education as the student judiciary decided not to...

You might be of the view that social media sites have revolutionized the way that people communicate and changed how we learn from each other. But if you are, you probably aren't serving in the legislature of Rhode Island.

Wait, what? Really? Rhode Island?

Oh yes, really. If Rhode Island's...

On May 3, Washington, D.C. will host World Press Freedom Day, an event designed to draw attention to the state of press freedom in the United States and around the world. Last week, the Student Press Law Center (and dozens of other organizations) published an open letter to President Obama...

If you don't have the luxury of watching student media all day, you might be operating under the misapprehension that bad journalism is what gets a student newspaper shut down. In fact, the opposite is true: most student reporters earn enemies in their administration by asking hard questions about important...

We may have a new champion in the contest for the person who cares least about imparting the value of the democratic process on the next generation of American leaders: New Hampshire's state House speaker.

Speaker William O'Brien, a Republican, is supporting an effort to...

One of the unusual aspects of student speech law is that some problems are seasonal. For example, showdowns over high school yearbook themes tend to happen in the early fall, while colleges trying to illegally retaliate against newspaper advisers tend to act in the summer. And early next year, when...

You might wonder about what students today are learning in high school. Do they still teach the Pythagorean theorem? Are biology classes learning about global warming? And are cheerleaders cheering loudly enough for the people who sexually assault them?

Oh, you don't think schools should be teaching that last bit?...

Some First Amendment problems knock you down with the force of the state of California landing on your head. Others come in smaller orders of magnitude. Like, say, when the FCC shuts down your personal television network in Quahog, Rhode Island. Or, for example,

Today, the Supreme Court decided Hastings Christian Fellowship v. Martinez, ruling that the Christian Legal Society (CLS) at Hastings College of Law does not have the right to be a Recognized Student Organization (RSO) because it did not want to admit members who were not Christian or were...

Presumably by now you've seen the video of Rep. Bob Etheridge (D-Lillington) getting into a physical confrontation with someone purporting to be a student asking questions about Etheridge's positions on the president's political agenda. If not, why don't you watch it right now. I'll wait.

The

The prior restraint a Wyoming judge placed on two newspapers was lifted today, which is great; but the institution that abused student privacy law to get the court order hasn't faced consequences yet.

If you need backstory: Laramie County Community College convinced a Wyoming judge to...

A prosecutor, flanked by at least seven police officers, presented student journalists at James Madison University's student newspaper The Breeze with an uncomfortable choice: provide copies of unpublished photographs of a block party that led to violence, or the officers would seize all the computers in the newsroom....

People who can't think of anything better to do with their outrage than interfere with the speech rights of others probably aren't that educable to begin with and don't belong in institutions of higher learning. They should leave the colleges and take up a trade -- hopefully, one that isn't...

Applying to colleges is like going on a bunch of first dates.

The college brochures were trying to impress you, after all. They were filled with pictures of students reading textbooks while sitting on the lawn, statements from faculty and students about how fabulous life is at their institution, and...

A former professor of mine, Joseph T. Dembo, passed away recently. I call him a professor because I encountered him at that stage of his life, but it's a bit like calling Bill Clinton a hamburger enthusiast; it may well be wholly true, but it skips over a...

I don't know where you go to college, but I'm going to guess the college has an internal disciplinary process that is designed to punish things like plagiarism or keeping a cat in the dorm in violation of housing rules.

But it's also possible that your institution's disciplinary process...

If Guy Morriss is proud of his students for stealing newspapers, it's probably because they didn't fumble them for once.

The short version of the story is that, after a story in the East Texan that reported on the arrest of two football team members, the Texas...

If someone acting on behalf of a public college cuts off funding to student media because he doesn't like what one particular outlet said, should it matter that what the outlet said was really, really offensive?

How you answer that question depends on whether you understand the First Amendment--and maybe...