The U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals said that it anticipates oral arguments in Kincaid v. Gibson will be scheduled for late May.
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.
In November, the court threw out an earlier and voted to rehear the Kentucky State University yearbook censorship before a 13-judge panel.
In its February 3 letter to lawyers for both sides, the court’s clerk also established a briefing deadline of March 6 for the students and April 5 for Kentucky State.
Case: Kincaid v. Gibson, Case No. 98-5385