The drop-and-drag availability of online material makes it oh-so-tempting to "borrow" a photo, vi...
Author: Frank LoMonte
What public forum doctrine means for your student publication
Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s Hazelwood ruling drew a road map for obtaining heightened First Amendment recognition in student media, hundreds of student publications have attempted to follow it, invoking the incantation “public forum.” Recent legal developments, however, have cast grave doubt on the value and durability of designating a publication — or any piece of government property — as a “forum.”
April 2014: In North Carolina and Ohio, two student editors discuss secret presidential searches
Secret presidential searches are becoming increasingly common at public colleges and universities around the country. On the podcast, Daniel Moore, editor of The Daily Kent Stater, and Michael Bragg, editor of The Appalachian, discuss their schools' recent secret presidential searches.
Court: Legal challenge to campus police raid can't proceed in secret
If you want to pursue a misconduct claim against campus police, be prepared to do it in public, a federal district judge ruled last week.
Supreme Court cellphone-search ruling sends a cautionary message to schools
In a 9-0 ruling that will reverberate in the nation's schoolhouses, the Supreme Court decided Wednesday that police can't automatically search the contents of a motorist's cellphone just because they arrest him.
Teachers, professors can speak more confidently after Supreme Court protects whistleblower's rights
The Supreme Court has taken a step -- whether it's a giant step or a baby step is yet to be seen -- toward restoring sensible First Amendment protection for teachers, professors and other government employees who blow the whistle on wrongdoing they learn about on the job.
Thursday's 9-0 ruling in Lane v. Franks protects government workers against firing, demotion or other retaliatory action for speech addressing matters of public concern, even if those matters relate to the speakers' work responsibilities.
Edward Lane brought the case after he was fired from Central Alabama Community College in 2009, a decision that suspiciously followed his testimony that helped convict an Alabama state legislator of defrauding the taxpayers for holding down a no-show "job" in Lane's department at CACC.
Supreme Court knocks down barrier insulating unconstitutional statutes against challenge
Justice Clarence Thomas, who famously insists that young people have no more rights than houseplants, just rescued students from a potentially devastating ruling making it nearly impossible to challenge an unconstitutional restraint on speech.
In a 9-0 opinion authored by Thomas, the Supreme Court decided Monday that a would-be speaker can bring a First Amendment claim against a statute penalizing speech without having to wait to suffer the punishment.
The Court's unanimous opinion overturns an errant decision from the Cincinnati-based Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeal, which departed from First Amendment precedent in ruling that a speaker could challenge a restraint on speech only by incurring the punishment or proving that punishment was imminent.
School censorship elevates Mich. students' message to the national stage
Blocked by school censors from sharing a thoughtful discussion of mental-health issues in the pages of the Community High School student newspaper, two Ann Arbor, Mich., teens were forced instead to settle for The New York Times and NPR's "Weekend Edition."
Proving once again that censorship is gasoline on the flame of a powerful idea, journalists Madeline Halpert and Eva Rosenfeld talked with NPR's Scott Simon today about how they were prevented from publishing a column examining the effects of depression on teens and why it's so hard for them to talk about.
Halpert was one of several students who agreed, with written parental permission, to be named in a story confronting the stigma surrounding mental illness that can, with tragic consequences, deter people struggling with depression from seeking professional help.
Markey-Hatch student privacy proposal fails to fix FERPA foolishness
A newly released draft Senate bill addressing concerns over the security of student data is, at best, a swing-and-a-miss at the larger problems afflicting federal privacy law. At worst, it's a damaging setback for the public's right to know.
U.S. Sens. Edward Markey (D-MA) and Orrin Hatch (R-UT) released draft legislation Wednesday responding to widespread public alarm over a 2011 U.S. Department of Education rule that, in the view of critics, made it easier for schools and colleges to share identifiable student data with researchers.
The bill proposes updates to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, the federal student privacy law, but does nothing to address the main problem afflicting FERPA: That its definition of confidential "education records" is grossly over-broad, enabling schools to conceal critical public-safety information or employee wrongdoing on bogus "student privacy" grounds.
Access to teacher evaluation records fuels privacy versus transparency debate
How government employees do their jobs is both a matter of legitimate public concern and also a source of potential embarrassment for any employee whose records are published for public examination.
The judgment call in favor of disclosure gets easier as the government employee's rank gets higher. We don't -- or shouldn't -- worry that a person willing to compete for a high-profile job like police chief or school superintendent will get his feelings hurt by critical comments about his job performance. The decision is trickier when the employee is a public school teacher, and doubly so because the way teachers are evaluated is itself a source of much dispute. If you're a teacher who believes the evaluation system is unfair, it feels especially unfair to be publicly labeled a "bad teacher" on the basis of an unreliable assessment.
Reconciling that tension between individual privacy and public accountability has proven to be a struggle for state courts, and recent rulings have resulted in inconsistent outcomes for those seeking access to teachers' records: