CALIFORNIA -- A state judge ordered a community college to produce documents relating to a confidential 1999 discrimination settlement in March.
Judge Larry Gaddis ruled that Sierra Joint Community College in Rocklin must release all documents to the public regarding the settlement, including the full amount paid by the college.
NEW YORK -- A Buffalo high school student suspended for five days in March is claiming that administrators violated his First Amendment rights by punishing him for an independent newspaper he distributed at school.
But Clarence Central School District superintendent Thomas Coseo said Steven Harnisch was punished for his defiant attitude toward school rules and personnel, not his paper.
"He was suspended for disorderly conduct," Coseo said.
INDIANA -- The heavy metal band Metallica sued a popular MP3-format music retrieval site and several universities in April for copyright infringement in an effort to end online music piracy.
Users of the site, Napster.com, are able to share song files between computers connected to the Internet.
Thirty-seven teachers from Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky and Tennessee gathered at The Freedom Forum First Amendment Center in Nashville, Tenn., in November for a conference designed to give them materials and training to better teach their students about the First Amendment.
Some would regard the effort as quixotic.
NEVADA -- In March, the state attorney general's office offered to teach the University of Nevada Board of Regents a lesson on the proper way to conduct public meetings.
Deputy Attorney General Victoria Oldenburg conducted an investigation into the board's compliance with the Nevada Open Meeting Law, in response to a complaint filed by Regent Tom Kirkpatrick against the board.
Legislation designed to protect student expression in school-sponsored publications died in Alabama in April after the bill's sponsor withdrew it from consideration.
KENTUCKY -- Kentucky State University, which is being sued by former students for violating their First Amendment rights in Kincaid v.
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Colleges and universities may use mandatory student activity fees to finance campus groups that engage in political speech as long as the funding system is viewpoint-neutral, the Supreme Court ruled in March.
In a unanimous decision, the Court rejected the argument of Christian and conservative students at the University of Wisconsin at Madison that the university's fee system violated their First Amendment rights by forcing them to fund groups they disagree with on political, religious or ideological grounds.
Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony M.
OHIO -- A federal judge refused to give a newspaper access to the student disciplinary records of two Ohio universities on March 20, saying the files qualify as education records and are protected from public release by federal law.
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MASSACHUSETTS -- Out of frustration with the slow progress supporters have made in getting states to pass anti-Hazelwood legislation, one adviser is working to pass a bill at the national level.
Harry Proudfoot, a newspaper adviser at Westport High School, said he believes passing one bill in Congress will be easier than passing 44 bills in the states.