Cases of student press censorship attempts on the rise in California schools

Student journalists at the Redwood Bark at Redwood High School in Marin County aren’t alone in facing recent attempts to control student journalism.

Despite protections in a 1977 landmark state law, the Student Free Expression Act, which prohibits administrators from interfering with the gathering and publication of news, student reporters and their journalism advisers have encountered censorship attempts in recent years, including efforts to punish advisers for students’ stories and to remove content. In one case, a principal told them that their job was to paint the high school in a good light.

Examples include: 

San Francisco Unified School District

A Superior Court judge in January ordered the district to reinstate the journalism adviser at Lowell High School, Eric Gustafson, to his job after he was removed last year. San Francisco Unified School District officials argued they transferred Gustafson because they wanted someone in his post with more experience and more education. 

Gustafson claimed it was because of his students’ aggressive reporting and stories on topics such as student drug use and teachers’ use of AI in grading, and because he refused to let school officials see stories before they were published, court records show.

Judge Christine Van Aken called the district’s claims “not credible.” The court concluded that the “motivation for the district’s reassignment decision was to impact the editorial content of The Lowell in a way that they could not accomplish directly,” she wrote in her decision.

Mountain View Los Altos High School District 

In Silicon Valley, a trial is scheduled for November over a lawsuit brought in 2024 by a journalism adviser and former students against the Mountain View Los Altos High School District. It alleges a principal, Kip Glazer, “improperly pressured and intimidated” student reporters working on a story about student-on-student sexual harassment.

Glazer sought to “avoid embarrassment rather than uphold the constitutional and statutory right of her students and faculty,” the suit charges. Glazer allegedly told student journalists on Mountain View High School’s Oracle newspaper staff that their purpose was to be “uplifting” for the school and to portray it “in a positive light,” records show. 

“The power dynamic was pretty clear,” one of the students’ lawyers, Jordyn Ostroff, told EdSource. “I think anyone would understand that a student, generally speaking, would probably feel obligated to do what a principal is demanding they do.”

The suit also alleges that Glazer illegally removed Oracle’s adviser, Carla Gomez, from her post, replacing her with the school’s drama teacher. Gomez is suing to get her job back.

The former students are seeking an order from a judge that would “prevent future censorship of the paper. They also want to ensure journalism is still taught at Mountain View High, where the district has cut an introduction to journalism class.

The lawyer defending the district, Eric Bengston, declined to comment. 

Sacramento City Unified School District

In 2024, the district placed Samantha Archuleta, the journalism adviser to The Prospector newspaper at C.K. McClatchy High School, named for the long-time editor of the Sacramento Bee, on administrative leave after a reporter quoted a fellow student saying that Adolph “Hitler had some good ideas.”  

The comment was reportedly made in a government class and printed in a column entitled “What did you say?” about remarks overheard at school.

Student journalists at The Prospector — where the writer Joan Didion was once on staff — wrote on Instagram that the quote had not reflected their beliefs but “was included to spark a conversation on how students here choose to use their words.” 

In a June 2024 guest piece in The Sacramento Bee, Archuleta wrote that “students have rights that give them the first and last say in what is written, how it is edited and what gets published without prior restraint, censorship or punishment from me or any other adult so long as it is protected speech.” 

Numerous free press and student press groups pushed for her reinstatement. However, she left her position at McClatchy High.

Los Angeles Unified School District

In 2021, Los Angeles Unified brought a disciplinary case against Adriana Chavira, the journalism adviser at Daniel Pearl Magnet High School, after she refused to censor students reporting on the Covid-19 pandemic’s effect on the school. The school is named for the late Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was murdered by jihadist militants in Pakistan in 2002.  

The school newspaper, The Pearl Post, had reported that the school librarian had refused to receive the Covid vaccine, and the library had been closed as a result. The librarian, citing privacy, demanded that The Post remove her name from a story published online. Student journalists refused. The school principal gave Chavira a day to remove the name. It stayed up. The district then suspended her.

In an essay published on the website of her union, the United Teachers Los Angeles, Chavira wrote: “Removing the information would mean that I was censoring my journalism students. And that is something I would never do since that goes against everything I’ve taught my student journalists.” 

The disciplinary case was withdrawn in 2022. Chavira continues to advise the Pearl Post, and is on the board of the Student Press Law Center.