Washington State Senate: FU to Student Press freedom

After a failed attempt in 2007 to protect students' free speech and press, Washington state legislators have again refused to pass a bill that would have safeguarded the First Amendment rights of student journalists at public high schools and universities.

Administrators would not have been allowed to exercise prior review over college publications under defeated bill.

Washington would have joined eight other states in protecting the free-expression rights of students: Oregon, California, Illinois, Kansas, Iowa, Massachusetts, Colorado and Arkansas. States began to seek their own protections for students' First Amendment rights after the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 2005 in Hosty v. Carter that public college administrators could censor the student press. A similar decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1988 in Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier allows high school administrators to censor student media.