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Student Press Exceptionalism, Sonja R. West

Scholarly Works

Constitutional protection for student speakers is an issue that has been hotly contested for almost 50 years. Several commentators have made powerful arguments that theCourt has failed to sufficiently protect the First Amendment rights of all students. But this debate has overlooked an even more troubling reality about the current state ofexpressive protection for student — the especially harmful effect of the Court’s precedents on student journalists. Under the Court’s jurisprudence, schools may regulate with far greater breadth and ease the speech of student journalists than of their non-press classmates. Schools are essentially free to censor the student press even …