Jasper Winterton
Feature Editor
New Voices Bill has been introduced to the Missouri Congress each year since 2016, marking 2026 as the 10th year since its first introduction.
According to the Student Press Law Center website, “New Voices is a student-powered nonpartisan grassroots movement of state-based activists who seek to protect student press freedom with state laws. These laws counteract the impact of the 1988 Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier Supreme Court decision, which dramatically changed the balance of student press rights.”
The New Voices Bill has been introduced to the Missouri House of Representatives multiple times over several years, but has yet to be passed. The House has passed previous versions of the bill in the past; however, the bill failed to make it through the Senate or to a full vote.
Cathy Kuhlmeier, a plaintiff in the 1988 Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier Supreme Court case, said via email, “I continue to fight for kids because quite simply the courts got it wrong, and their decision has caused students to self-censor or just step away from journalism altogether.”
Kuhlmeier was in her junior year of high school when she, along with her classmates, brought the Hazelwood School District to court in response to their principal censoring and deleting articles from their newspaper without their permission. The students claimed their First Amendment rights had been violated, and after the case was appealed to the Supreme Court, the court found that the principal’s actions did not violate the students’ free speech in a 5-3 ruling.
Since the court case, organizations such as the Student Press Law Center, along with activists, have worked to introduce new legislation protecting the freedom of the press within student media, known as the New Voices Bill.
The “Cronkite New Voices Act” was reintroduced this legislative session, which includes bills SB 1172 and HB 2918, both of which still need to be voted out of their committees. According to the Student Press Law Center, Missouri hasn’t had a bill in both the House and Senate since 2022.
Kuhlmeier said, “I feel like we’ve made progress with 18 states passing New Voices, but the work is not done. Students are being censored, papers are being shut down, and advisors’ jobs or tenure are being threatened.”
“My son was censored his junior year of high school as well, and the way his occurred is crazy with how much it parallels my story,” Kuhlmeier added.
According to the Principals Guide to Scholastic Journalism, “The first direct experience most Americans have with press freedom, and the censorship that limits it, begins when they are in school working on student media. That’s why journalism educators, judges and First Amendment advocates have urged schools to support and foster student free expression because it is key to persuading young people ‘that our Constitution is a living reality, not [just] parchment preserved under glass.’”
Kuhlmeier said during her senior year in high school she “got threatened to be suspended or expelled for not asking the principal’s permission to miss school when we appeared on the Phil Donahue show. Class wise, we had shifted to yearbook production, so it was more carefully watched. It was very tense all year because it was a hot topic with the media, and the principal didn’t like the exposure being in the school.”
Kuhlmeier added she runs a foundation to help support student free speech and holds virtual classes to share her side of what happened in Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier.
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Jasper Winterton-Feature EditorThis will be Jasper Winterton’s third year on ECHO staff. He made several contributions while taking journalism class his freshman year. |
