ABSTRACT
Student newspapers within a public school setting involve two competing yet compelling interests. First, the schools have an interest as institutions to control the expressive content students create, distribute, and read. Second, the students have interests in exercising their freedom of speech rights granted through the First Amendment to the Constitution. Schools can forbid students to distribute newspapers at a time and place where distribution might cause a disturbance. Schools are entitled to regulate what is printed in student newspapers provided the regulation is reasonably related to legitimate pedagogical concerns. This gives broad deference to the school-it may regulate a school newspaper in any manner if it can point to a pedagogical matter. Newspapers distributed at colleges receive more free speech protection than newspapers at elementary, middle, or high schools. Courts believe that college-age students are more resilient to offensive material than high school students.
