This is one in a series of posts reflecting on New Voices accomplishments and lessons learned in 2024. Other posts in this series can be found here.
Nearly a decade of advocacy finally paid off this year for Minnesota’s New Voices supporters, but they say there is still more work to do for student press freedom in the state.
Gov. Tim Walz signed SF 3567 into law on May 17, officially making Minnesota the 18th state to enact student press freedom protections, commonly known as “New Voices” legislation.
The law’s student journalism provisions ensure that Minnesota’s public sixth through 12th grade student journalists determine the content published in school-sponsored student media and protects them from censorship except in certain rare circumstances. The law also shields student media advisers from professional retaliation for refusing to unlawfully censor their students. Notably, however, the law excludes yearbooks from these protections.
The law reverses the impact of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1988 Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier decision, which set a vague standard for lawful censorship of student media. The result of a vague standard is the regular silencing of student voices.
Advocates didn’t give up after earlier setbacks
Minnesota advocates have worked since at least 2015 to pass New Voices protections, with long-time bill sponsor Rep. Cheryl Youakim first introducing legislation in 2016.
In 2018, for example, students from across Minnesota met with legislators at the state capitol during a lobby day, and they organized a postcard campaign thanking supportive legislators and asking for support from others.
That year, the House education committee chair refused to schedule a hearing on the bill, but advocates said they wouldn’t give up.
“We still are very hopeful that this is going to move forward, and I don’t think we will go away until it does,” journalism adviser Lori Keekley said at the time. Keekley is now director of Quill & Scroll, a journalism honor society for high school journalists.
Advocates didn’t go away after the legislature failed to pass New Voices bills in later years either, including 2019 and 2020.
Persistence pays off in 2024
Standalone New Voices bills were originally introduced again this year in the House and the Senate, sponsored by Rep. Youakim and Sen. Steve Cwodzinksi, before merging with other legislation into a larger education policy omnibus bill that ultimately was signed into law.
Kathryn Campbell, president of the Minnesota High School Press Association, said changes in the makeup of the legislature created a real opportunity for New Voices over the past couple years.
“After a significant legislative change in 2023, we used that first year to organize because we knew there were legislators who needed to prioritize making good on campaign promises to their constituents,” she said.
Then they built on that work in 2024 in what Grayson Marlow, advocacy associate at the Student Press Law Center, said could be a model for other states.
“This is the first New Voices law passed as part of an omnibus bill, which at least in Minnesota was a way to attach it to legislators’ other priorities and increase its odds of success,” he said. “Depending on the legislative environment, that could also work elsewhere.”
Campbell said students’ voices were critical to the law’s passage, and she recommended that New Voices advocates in other states ensure students are “excited to be part of the process in big and small ways” early in the process.
Student advocate Belle Lapos agreed that legislators were more inclined to listen to and sympathize with students.
“It’s one thing to have an adviser tell our stories, but it’s so much more powerful when the students themselves take the time to go to the state legislators and speak on behalf of themselves and so many others like them,” she said.
When Rep. Youakim originally needed students to help with the bill again this term, though, she found herself in a common situation among student rights advocates: “All of the supporters from earlier had graduated,” she said.
She reached out to some advisers, and Stillwater Area High School’s Rachel Steil and The Blake School’s Anna Reid passed on the information to their students.
It turned out that Lapos and Stella McHugh, editors-in-chief at The Pony Express and seniors at Stillwater this past school year, already had some experience with New Voices when Steil reached out.
“For our AP U.S. History project, we decided to make a big project about how New Voices bills are super important,” Lapos said, noting that they had first heard of the legislation when an SPLC staff member spoke at a state journalism convention. “[Steil] didn’t know at that point that we had already done so much research and extensive work on it.”
McHugh and Lapos were eager to help and testified in front of both the House and Senate Education Policy committees, along with other advocates. Part of their motivation was their own experience with self-censorship while reporting on issues of race at their school.
“We did have to sugarcoat [the story], we did have to be careful. We were wary of district administration, even though we had a super supportive principal,” McHugh said. “But this story was a huge eye opener for me personally, just the people that we met, the stories that we heard, and perspective from other students at our school was so heartbreaking.”
McHugh and Lapos encouraged other students to use their voices to fight for New Voices in their states.
“My advice for other advocates is to have confidence in both yourself and in New Voices,” McHugh said. “Be educated on the legislation and why it may have not passed in years prior. Know the landmark cases that drastically altered student press law. Understanding these things will help boost your confidence and passion for the legislation and work being done.”
Lapos added, “No voice is too small to create change. Some of the most powerful voices of activism are those directly affected by these restrictive laws. Don’t allow anyone to tell you that you are too young to spark a change.”
Looking forward
While this year’s success was a decade in the making, advocates know there is more work to do.
“Even as we celebrate, I hope the law is the first step of advocacy,” Campbell said after the law’s passage. “It needs to extend to high school yearbook journalists at some point in time. Whether added to future legislation or not, I hope it will also serve as the standard for private school and college programs in the state.”
Minnesota is the only state with New Voices legislation that explicitly denies protections to yearbook staffs, who serve the important journalistic role of documenting student life.
Rep. Youakim said principals and school boards expressed concern about the permanency of yearbooks.
Student journalists at private schools are also not protected under the New Voices law, but Yoni Zacks hopes Minnesota can join California and Rhode Island in protecting private school students too. Zacks, co-editor-in-chief at The Spectrum and a junior at The Blake School last year, testified in favor of the bill even though it wouldn’t apply to him.
“My hope is that now that it is solidified, there will be less pushback [towards private school protections] because they will see that it is already OK,” Zacks said.
And while the editorial board of the Minneapolis Star Tribune celebrated the law’s passage, it called for extending press freedom protections to college journalists too.
Meanwhile, supporters’ attention will also turn to ensuring stakeholders understand the law and districts apply it correctly through their student media policies.
“As we move forward it is important to educate students, advisers, principals, school boards and others about the significance of this new legislation,” Keekley said.
Why it matters
Campbell said the new law will allow student journalists to do more reporting rooted in legal and ethical decision-making without fear of censorship.
“I cannot wait to see what that level of empowerment does to the quality reporting happening in schools across Minnesota,” she said.
Hopkins Senior High School adviser Jeff Kocur said the law will inspire more people to become student journalists.
“This law helps make student journalism so much more powerful,” he said. “It can actually create change in communities and create conversations that matter.”
Keekley, who was a high school journalist when Hazelwood was decided, said the law also gives students the opportunity to more directly understand the role of a free press in a democracy.
“For students to really practice and promote their voice is quintessential to democracy,” she said.
Rep. Youakim, who was also a high school journalist, said the skills students learn in student media will translate to any career.
“It is more important than ever before for our students to learn media literacy and communication skills that they can carry with them in whatever path they take after high school,” she said.
Learn more in SPLC’s guide to Minnesota’s New Voices law.