Student Press Law Center’s Frank LoMonte has a must read on the most recent free speech court ruling. The three-member judiciary, LoMonte says, “swerved unnecessarily, and sideswiped much of the First Amendment protection that college students thought they enjoyed.”
Ward repudiates any notion college attorneys may have had that, once speech is classified as Hazelwood speech, that means the college automatically wins and the student automatically loses. We now know better, conclusively so.Ward stands for the proposition that, if the student can prove an impermissible motive, then the student will prevail even under the censorship-friendly Hazelwood standard. And once a student has raised the inference of an improper motive, it is for a jury to sort out. (In Ward‘s case, it was decisive that the college imposed punishment under what appeared to be made-up-on-the-spot standards.)
If the takeaway from Ward is that colleges cannot expect to summarily dispose of their students’ constitutional claims where the motivation for discipline is in doubt, and where the documentation of a legitimate motive is thin, that is not so bad of a lesson.
