The wait continues. As of Nov. 22, the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals had still not issued a ruling in response to the students petition for a rehearing before the full court in the Kincaid v. Gibson college censorship case.
The case involves the confiscation of all copies of the 1993-94 student yearbook by school officials and the transfer of the newspaper adviser to a secretarial position after she refused administrative demands to censor the publication. In September a divided three-judge panel on the appeals court upheld the censorship. In a landmark ruling, the court held that the U.S Supreme Court’s 1988 Hazelwood decision, which allowed for the censorship of a high school student newspaper, applied with equal force to college student expression.
Attorneys in the case had expected to hear from the court in early November and still expect a decision on the rehearing motion to be handed down any day.
Case: Kincaid v. Gibson, No. 98-5385