Dickey V. Carter Case Summary

Under First Amendment law, Dickey had the right to publish the article because TSU relied on state funds to function, thus making it a government entity. Even if the editorial was stopped because it criticized the Alabama government, the Free Press Clause protects citizens’ and media’s right to express themselves through written idea, opinions and dissemination of information without interference or censorship from the government. This case also enacted that public schools were not responsible for what their student media published and could not be threatened with state funding cuts, nor could public universities use state funding as means to censor student media. The court went on to add that the university did not have to hire Dickey as

Alabama State Board of Education gave college-aged journalist more freedom, Hosty v. Carter (2005) set student journalist two steps back. Governors State University’s student publication The Innovator made waves in the press when they began to report on more hard-hitting news stories that were occurring on campus and less on the public relations fluff pushed by the university. In October 2005, the newspaper published articles that criticized the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences for not renewing the contract of their faculty adviser. Similar to TSU’s The Tropolitian, The Innovator was at a public university and therefore had the right to publish factual statements regardless if the university viewed it negatively. When the university accused the newspaper of refusing “to retract factual statements that the administration deemed false, or even to print the administration's responses,” the university halted printing and demanded the administration review and approve the paper prior to printing. This demand went against the university’s policy that “Student editors control the paper's content, and school policy, set by the Student Communications Media Board, prohibits the exercise of prior restraint or ex post censorship to override their decisions.” Therefore, not only did the school break its own policy to not use prior restraint, but it also went against Supreme Court rulings enacted in Near v. Minnesota and The New York Times v. The United States