B. HYPODr Sophie FataleWhile functioning as the

: It is March 2018. , principal at Little Tokyo Senior High School in Yakuzaville, Maryland, has just unilaterally shut down a student run digital news magazine called the Crazy 88 News.com, and summarily suspended 233 students for walking out of class with signs for 17 minutes to honor the 17 kids killed at Marjory Stoneman High School in Parkland, Fla.

internal high school newspaper, it ALSO may be accessed by anyone (no passwords or fire wall; outsiders are not allowed to post comments or access some content, however, by agreement with the school administration. School or faculty sign-ons are needed for that.) and presents multimedia news, sports and editorial content which covers school matters from new construction, school board meetings to the prom etc. AND general neighborhood issues (home sales, local crime, new restaurants, traffic issues) with student journalists filing real stories, and original images and video or images and video aggregated from other sources and reposted with proper copyright credit). Some of the latter includes national matters (politics, climate change, women’s rights, terrorism). There is a governing board made up of students, alumni, current media professionals who live in Baltimore-Washington area (and some overlap as alumni), Dr. Fatale, and Ms. O-Ren Ishi-I, who is faculty advisor and editorial consultant.

In response to Florida and Kentucky mass shootings, and an armed teacher accidentally discharging a firearm in a class and thus causing injuries, Crazy 88 News.com has offered a number of editorials supporting the students in Florida and their marches to state capitals and DC. Urging students and their families to participate in the March for Our Lives in DC on March 24, 2018 and supports the 17-minute walkout spread by kids over social media on March 14, 2018. The site has also published several editorials by other students with alternative views–espousing gun rights and/or defending the National Rifle Association. This comes on the heels of two exposes published in the Fall of 2017 over Dr. Fatale’s objections at the governing board meeting, concerning the bullying of and eventual suicide attempt by a female student who was beginning to identify as a male, and alcohol abuse/sexual harassment issues sparked by #MeToo concerning the lacrosse team, which resulted in two players being suspended rather expelled, and an assistant coach, Mr. Ordell Robbie, resigning.

Mr. Robbie immediately ran for a vacant seat on the county council and somehow won. For most of January and February 2018 he is on TV and talk radio, social media, attacking the “PC culture of the school.” In March he shifted and suddenly now pillories the school for “An attack on the Second Amendment” even though he had no association with gun rights, etc. and even professed to be pro-gun control when he was working at the school, having friends  in law enforcement in Connecticut and Colorado, sites of other shootings. Robbie now quotes misuse of taxpayer money wasted on protest and not learning and has vowed to pressure the school board to discipline any student who walks out.

On March 12, Dr. Fatale, sends a notice to the school board that she is shutting down the site unilaterally as she claims she can do, and says any student walking out on March 13 will be suspended and will have to collect their things and go home when they return from the 17-minute walkout. Her reasoning to students, as she announces over the lunchtime PA system on March 12 is similar to the position she’s outlined to the Board:

“For our school news, rather than just report the pleasant educational atmosphere there is often there is vulgarity in the text, and the comments section of many pieces contain vicious anonymous comments about the faculty, and is a forum for bullying, racist attacks on specific students and general ethnic groups, homophobic and other statements, promises to sexually assault certain female students, etc.  Moreover, the local and national news sections are often just rehashes or curation from other news sources. There are plenty of adult, professional news sources outside of this school with serve the community and are accessible in traditional print form and on devices, so this outlet is superfluous. Plus, this distracts from your classroom work, where you indeed must learn the underpinnings of the social, scientific, political, economic and even entertainment fabric of this community, nation and planet. This, and not adult journalism, is your mission, as you are teenagers, hence still legally children, and as such do not have the expertise, experience our maturity to operate such an enterprise, or report on such disruptive issues…

…as for the protest, it is disruptive to your education and our mission to educate you, and serves no purpose but thoughtless political posturing. There is no place for that here at Little Tokyo. You must defer to our direction, as you are still children.”

However, she never gets specific about the “vulgarity;” indeed the students show in an email response the following day, with clips and screen shots, signed by the editorial board and its faculty advisor, Ms. O-Ren Ishi-I, that any “vulgarity” is in quotes from adult human sources (including parents) not students or faculty, and “true curse words are edited with (for example, ‘f__k'” in all text pieces) . Moreover, they list text articles and video content where there is strong language, true, but it is coming from legitimate original hard news stories they are running about robberies around the school, bullying on school buses, and underage drinking and supplement abuse by school athletes—and Rx drug abuse by students in the neighborhood. However, with regard to the video content only, Ms. Ishi-I adds that the students requested audio editing (“beeping out” words ) software but Dr. Fatale denied the request, citing a budget shortfall. There is no evidence the students publishing legally protected confidential student or faculty information etc., or misused copyrighted content; Ms. Ishi-I says her job is to police those issues but not be a censor. The students also present evidence which show that they aggregate and curate less material/news, in relative terms, than the city’s daily newspaper’s site, or the local TV station. Indeed, their weekly local and national news roundups are basically just a “ticker” running AP headlines, local weather and sports scores. As for anonymous comments, they show evidence that they do indeed have the right to delete comments which are offensive or have attached nudity/sex etc,  or are racist, sexist, homophobic or attack certain teachers and students by name, and have done so. But they admit that many items “slipped through the cracks,” and that they don’t wish to police comments too vigorously, as comments often become “stories themselves” and help with “lively debate.”

Moreover, Ms. Ishi-I points out that “Shutting it down was a prior restraint of what is a public forum, and Sophie never looked at alternative other than summary suspension in response to the student protestors.” She also says Fatale, in an email, threatened to fire her (and did not notify the union) when Ishi-I brought up reasonable alternatives for students who wanted to do the silent walk-out. She was going to present the email (which Fatale has apparently deleted) in the school paper in the form of an editorial.

A group of student journalists, videographers and photographers and their parents have hired attorneys and are threatening to sue the Little Tokyo-Yakuzaville – Samurai-town Unified School District and Dr. Fatale for shutting down the news site at the high school. The ACLU is advising the parents of about 224 students who have signed up to walk out of classes and are similarly threatening to sue.

How might, or might not, Fatale’s two decisions survive First Amendment challenges?