Following up from 2006’s AB 2581—designed to ensure that college administrators weren’t able to exercise prior restraint over student news publications, California lawmakers are now working to ensure that newspaper advisors and other staff won’t be punished for the content of student publications. Unfortunately, that is sometimes a tactic to restrict what students publish in student-run news outlets.
While AB 2581 stopped prior restraint of news publications,
it did not provide protections for the advisers that help students to speak their
mind or defend themselves (similar efforts in states like Illinois rectified
this problem with their 2007 bills). The bill, SB
1370, passed the California Senate this week and will hopefully land on
Governor Schwarzenegger’s desk this year.
sb_1370_bill_20080221_introduced.pdf