Hazelwood Case Summary

In St. Louis, Missouri in the spring of 1983, the journalism students of Hazelwood East High School completed their final edition for the school year and allowed their school principal to review it before sending it to be printed. The principal, Robert Reynolds, decided an article concerning divorce was unfair and personal as well as an article about teen pregnancy was inappropriate. Reynolds was afraid the students would miss their deadline if they tried to change the stories and felt the best option would be to delete the two pages with the troubling articles and have the rest of the newspaper published.
The students were upset that two full pages had been omitted and were not approached about the problems prior, arguing that the censorship
“There is no way a school can teach American values while modeling the values of a dictatorship… We want people who understand and appreciate the role of the news media and don’t accept that the government dictates what is or is not news.” This Supreme Court decision has also led to Anti-Hazelwood laws that enact greater free-speech protection for student publications in several states yet in many places prior review is still a requirement and censorship still happens. By the Supreme Court not specifying what is and is not reasonable to retract student expression, the Hazelwood decision is continuing to be used as an excuse to censor students. There are already problems of young adults not being taken seriously, this decision only worsens that. Student expression is extremely important and allowing censorship without clear cut rules blocks the thoughts of young minds. The Supreme Court needs to clear up questions regarding Hazelwood and the First Amendment eventually. Until then students will have to deal with the reduced protection of the First Amendment in schools and hope school officials won’t take advantage of the Hazelwood