Arizona student journalists could get 1st Amendment protections – AZCentral.com

(Photo: Courtney Pedroza/The Republic)

In 1992, a Greenway High Schooljournalism student testified before an Arizona Senate committee in support of a bill to provideincreased First Amendmentprotections to high school journalists. She and her fellow students on the school newspaper inspired the bill after school administrators killed a story and an editorial cartoon.

Twenty-five years later, that student is now a state senator herself and advocating for the very same bill which never passed, despite multiple efforts over the years. She's giving it another try.

Sen. Kimberly Yee, R-Phoenix, introduced Senate Bill 1384, which allows a student journalist at a high school, community college or university to exercise free speech in school-sponsored media. Specifically, it states that student journalists' freedom of speech and of the press are not limited because the media is funded by the school or produced as part of a journalism class.

It also prohibits discipline against a student journalist or a student media adviserwho exercisestheir speech or press freedoms

"I have a very personal history with this bill," Yee said, adding that she wrote stories and drew editorial cartoons as a student. "I'm just trying to get our First Amendment rights exercising in our student papers."

There are limits. The bill concedes that it doesn't authorize media that doesn't comply with written standards for school-sponsored media adopted by the school, or that disrupts the "orderly operation" of the school.It also wouldn't override the 1988 U.S. Supreme Court opinion in Hazelwood School District vs. Kuhlmeier, which stated that schools may refuse to support speech that is inconsistent with their standards.

But even with those limits, students, teachers and Yee advocated for the bill during a Senate Education Committee public hearing Thursday. Yee sits on the committee. The bill passed and now advances to a vote of the full Senate.

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Arizona student journalists could get 1st Amendment protections - AZCentral.com

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