Eight student media lawsuits we’re following
Legal

It has been a turbulent year in the courts for student journalism, with a number of decided and ongoing cases that could have long-lasting implications for student press freedom and beyond. 

From adviser firings, magazine shutdowns, AI surveillance of student work and lawsuits over the chilling effect of immigration enforcement, the Student Press Law Center has been tracking these fights as they unfold.

Here’s where eight of these cases stand right now.

Adviser firings and/or traditional censorship

Libel

Reporter’s privilege/confidentiality

Other

Gustafson v. San Francisco Unified School District (Lowell High School)

Status: Closed
Subject: Adviser firing

SPLC called a January decision in this adviser retaliation case a “major win for student journalists and a warning to school administrators,” and that decision is now final.

In March 2025, Lowell High School’s journalism adviser, Eric Gustafson, was reassigned to English classes after the administrators expressed unhappiness with specific reporting in the student magazine, The Lowell.

This type of adviser retaliation, which California’s New Voices law prohibits, is a common tactic used by school administrators to intimidate student journalists and chill student expression. 

In January, a California court found administrators at the San Francisco high school had reassigned Gustafson to “impact the editorial content of The Lowell in a way that they could not accomplish directly,” and it ordered the district to restore his position as journalism teacher and adviser. 

The district did not appeal the decision, and Gustafson is set to be reinstated at the start of the 2026-2027 school year. His victory is the first known test of California’s adviser-protection provision since it took effect in 2009.

“It was me just standing up for [student journalists]. It’s really my job,” Gustafson told The Lowell.

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Gomez v. Glazer (Mountain View High School)

Status: Ongoing
Subject: Adviser firing and censorship 

Roughly an hour’s drive south of San Francisco, another adviser retaliation case is moving toward a jury trial in November.

Two former Mountain View High School students and The Oracle’s former adviser sued their school district on Student Press Freedom Day in 2024 for censoring a lengthy investigative piece four students wrote about student-on-student sexual harassment. 

They accuse the school of “bullying, threatening and coerc[ing]” the student newspaper staff in spring 2023 and retaliating by cutting a journalism class and removing their adviser.

The lawsuit — which is set for trial on Nov. 23 — centers around the alleged pressure the Oracle staff received from the principal “to significantly water down their in-depth investigative piece” and write about the school in a “positive light.”

Meanwhile, outgoing co-editors-in-chief Renuka Mungee and Mitchell Eng wrote in May that years-long tension with administrators, frequent turnover among advisers and classrooms, and curriculum changes continue to significantly hurt the MVHS journalism program.

“What once felt like a close-knit and energetic classroom has become harder to sustain as uncertainty surrounding the program continues to grow,” they wrote.

The lawsuit’s plaintiffs are represented by attorneys at the law firm Jassy Vick Carolan LLP, whom they connected with through SPLC’s nationwide volunteer Attorney Referral Network.

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Pointer v. Phelps (University of Alabama)

Status: Ongoing
Subject: Closure of student media outlets

In a preliminary decision that the Student Press Law Center condemned as threatening to college press freedom nationwide, a federal court judge ruled May 22 that the university likely did not violate the First Amendment when it closed student-led Alice Magazine and Nineteen Fifty-Six because the publications focused on women and Black students, respectively.

Eight students sued the university in March, alleging that the university illegally suspended the magazines because of their editorial viewpoints. 

Former Alice editor-in-chief Gabrielle Gunter, who spoke with SPLC about the situation in February, is one of the student plaintiffs.  

“Discrimination based on the views of students who seek to create inclusive media for all students has no place in our society, so it’s really important for me to keep fighting for what’s right,” Gunter said in a press release announcing the lawsuit.

While the judge denied the students’ request for a preliminary injunction, an early tool in litigation to preserve the status quo, the litigation continues. The students are represented by attorneys for the Southern Poverty Law Center, the American Civil Liberties Union and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, who said they were evaluating next steps.

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Rodenbush v. Indiana University

Status: Voluntarily dismissed (to be refiled in state court)
Subject: Adviser firing

Though former Student Media Director Jim Rodenbush voluntarily dropped his initial lawsuit against Indiana University in April, Rodenbush says he plans to refile in state court soon.

The original lawsuit, filed in federal court, alleged IU violated Rodenbush’s First and 14th Amendment rights when the university fired him on Oct. 14. It followed his and the Indiana Daily Student editors’ refusal to comply with administrators’ orders to publish “no news” content in a Homecoming print edition of the IDS.

Rodenbush’s attorneys told the IDS it was unclear whether a non-resident of Indiana could sue a state agency in federal court under the 11th Amendment. In a LinkedIn post, Rodenbush said he will start a new position this fall at Western Kentucky University as an associate professor of journalism.

“As far as I’m concerned, this doesn’t really change anything,” Rodenbush told the IDS. “My intent is to see this case until it absolutely is over.”

Most recently, a coalition of 14 national journalism organizations led by SPLC sent a letter calling on IU officials to commit to implementing recommendations from a task force set up in the wake of public outcry around the IDS censorship and Rodenbush’s firing. SPLC previously condemned IU’s actions and connected Rodenbush with the attorneys who represented him in his federal lawsuit.

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Kay v. The Irish Rover (University of Notre Dame)

Status: Closed
Subject: Libel

The Irish Rover fended off a libel lawsuit in 2024, and now an Indiana court has ordered the plaintiff to pay the publication’s legal fees.

Notre Dame professor Tamara Kay sued the independent student newspaper in 2023, claiming defamation for two articles that reported Kay’s pro-abortion activism. The case was dismissed in January 2024, with an Indiana superior court finding The Rover’s reporting was “true” and “not made with actual malice.” The Indiana Court of Appeals upheld that decision in January 2025, and the Indiana Supreme Court denied Kay’s request for review in June 2025.

Last month brought another win for The Rover when a judge ruled that, under the Indiana anti-SLAPP law, the professor must pay $199,450.40 to cover the outlet’s legal fees related to defending the case and subsequent appeals. 

Anti-SLAPP laws are designed to deter meritless lawsuits that attempt to silence free speech. The laws create a process for courts to quickly dismiss those types of lawsuits and order the plaintiff to pay the defendant’s costs.

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Tell v. Lawrence Board of Education

Status: Ongoing
Subject: AI surveillance tools

The Lawrence, Kansas, lawsuit challenging a school district’s use of AI surveillance tools is progressing toward a jury trial in January, while the parties battle over related issues.

Nine current and former students of Lawrence and Free State high schools filed the federal civil rights lawsuit in August. They allege that the district’s use of Gaggle and later ManagedMethods, controversial AI surveillance tools that flag and remove files in the district’s Google Workspace that it deems a safety risk, violates their privacy and press freedom rights.

While the primary issues are yet to be decided, the court has decided some related issues.

Students were temporarily prevented from publishing a story on the lawsuit in August, but they eventually did so following assurances from the district that it would not restrain the student journalists or their adviser going forward. 

The students had sought the court’s intervention to stop the censorship. The judge denied the students’ request for an emergency temporary restraining order — meaning one issued without giving the school district a chance to respond — but deferred an ultimate decision until after the district responded. In doing so, the court highlighted the Kansas New Voices law’s applicability to such issues, which the students considered a victory.

This month, the court found the district did not act in good faith when it failed to respond to the students’ requests under the Kansas Open Records Act for records related to the district’s use of the software. The court had previously ordered the district to respond to the request, and now it must pay the students’ legal fees associated with that request.

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Fellowship of Christian University Students at The University of Texas at Dallas v. Eltife

Status: On appeal
Subject: Texas law banning overnight speech

A federal appeals court is reviewing a district court’s decision to pause the enforcement of a Texas law that prohibits “expressive activity” overnight on college campuses.

Senate Bill 2972 aims to restrict protests on campus following widespread student demonstrations related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but its terms could apply to a wide assortment of speech. 

A lawsuit filed Sept. 3 by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression on behalf of The Retrograde — an independent student newspaper at the University of Texas at Dallas — and other student groups across Texas alleges that the law could interfere with their First Amendment-protected activity, including newsgathering.

A little over a month after the lawsuit was filed, a Texas district judge halted enforcement of the new law by issuing a preliminary injunction.

“The First Amendment does not have a bedtime of 10 p.m.,” wrote Judge David Alan Ezra. “Giving administrators discretion to decide what is prohibited ‘disruptive’ speech gives the school the ability to weaponize the policy against speech it disagrees with.”

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Stanford Daily v. Rubio

Status: Ongoing
Subject: Chilling effect of immigration laws on protected speech

A federal judge has requested more information following May 27 oral arguments in a case concerning the chilling effect of federal immigration enforcement actions on students at Stanford University and across the country. 

The lawsuit, filed by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression on behalf of The Stanford Daily and two non-media student plaintiffs, challenges Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s use of two federal immigration law provisions to revoke international students’ visas and deport them for constitutionally protected speech.

Plaintiffs argue that the provisions are unconstitutional and have caused a chilling effect on noncitizen voices. This followed the federal detention of multiple noncitizen students in spring 2025, including former Tufts University Ph.D student Rumeysa Ozturk for writing a pro-Palestinian op-ed in The Tufts Daily student newspaper.

“As an independent student paper whose mission is to represent the voices of the Stanford community, this fear of the government directly impacts the quality of our work,” former Daily editors Lauren Koong, Ananya Udaygiri and Greta Reich wrote in a letter explaining why they joined the lawsuit.

In October, an SPLC-led coalition of 55 student news organizations and newsroom leaders filed an amicus brief in the lawsuit to highlight the chilling effect’s widespread reach.

The judge previously denied the government’s request to dismiss the lawsuit. Parties must file additional documents with the court on June 26, and another hearing is scheduled for July 28.

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