Tag: legal alert

Two high school student reporters in Denver got a close-up look at the strong arm of the law in late November when a police officer confiscated and exposed the film they were using to take photographs in the school parking lot.

Staff members of a Missouri high school newspaper filed a First Amendment suit against their school in October after school officials fired their newspaper adviser.

Students at Blue Springs South High School in Blue Springs, Mo., claim that their former adviser, Valerie Halas, was removed from her position after she refused to censor stories to which school officials had objected.

Call it deja vu. Sort of. It was just about nine years ago that Traci Bauer, then-editor of the Standard, the student newspaper at Southwest Missouri State University, filed suit against her school after campus security officials refused to give the newspaper incident reports about an alleged rape involving a varsity basketball player.

The U.S. Supreme Court refused on Oct. 5 to hear the appeal of a North Carolina high school drama teacher who was involuntarily transferred from her job after community members complained about a play performed by her advanced acting class.

An Idaho state court judge ruled in October that a SCHOOL DISTRICT'S POLICY PROHIBITING TEACHERS FROM TALKING WITH THE MEDIA DURING THE SCHOOL DAY WAS UNCONSTITUTIONAL.

On the INTERNET REGULATION front, in late October Congress passed a new law that would make it a crime to "knowingly" communicate "for commercial purposes" material considered "harmful to minors." Penalties include jail time and fines of up to $50,000 for each day of violation.

An Illinois appellate court recently ruled that a PUBLIC ELEMENTARY SCHOOL TEACHER WAS NOT A "PUBLIC FIGURE" for purposes of a libel suit she filed against a Chicago television station.