A new Oregon law protects high-school and college journalists from censorship by administrators, and permits the students to sue if they believe their free-speech rights have been infringed.
According to the Associated Press, the measure was signed into law Friday by Oregon’s governor, Ted Kulongoski, a Democrat. The law is in part a response to a 2005 federal appeals-court decision holding that Governors State University, in Illinois, could censor its student newspaper, The Innovator (The Chronicle, June 21, 2005). The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to the case in 2006.
California and Illinois have since passed laws similar to Oregon’s. —Lawrence Biemiller
