FIRAC Worksheet

University of Phoenix Material

FIRAC Worksheet

Appendix B: Briefing and Analyzing Cases in Constitutional Law offers a model to brief a court case. FIRAC stands for Facts, Issue, Rule(s), Analyze, and Conclusion. Read about this model and see an example of it in Appendix B. Then, select a United States Supreme Court case on the First Amendment and complete a FIRAC analysis using the worksheet below. For each portion of the FIRAC analysis, include a 200- to 300-word response.

SUPREME COURT case: Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier

FACTS: Lay out the facts of the case.

Sometime during the school year of 1987, the principal of Hazelwood East Public School had made the decision to remove two articles from the school newspaper due to the fact that they contained controversial content. The newspaper, known as “The Spectrum”, was paid for by the Board of Education and it was produced by the journalism class at the school. The two articles that were found controversial contained topics such as teenage pregnancy and divorce. The article about divorce contained personal information from a student dealing with this dilemma in her personal life, and the articles about teenage pregnancy were featured stories with experiences from some of the students attending the school. The students interviewed for these articles had changed their names in order to protect their privacy. Although the students felt that these topics needed to be discussed amongst their peers, the principal removed them from the paper. Student Cathy Kuhlmeier, along with two other students in her class felt that these actions were a direct violation of their first amendment rights that grants them both access to the freedom of the press and also to the freedom of speech. In order to retaliate against these actions, Cathy and her two classmates decided to sue the school ("Facts and Case Summary: Hazelwood V. Kuhlmeier", n.d.).

ISSUE: Identify the legal issue.

The First Amendment states that Congress is not allowed to make any laws that prevents actions such as the removal or editing the freedoms of speech and the freedom of the press as well. When these students decided to sue the Hazelwood School District, they believed that the actions of their principal were unconstitutional in removing the two articles that were placed in the paper. The legal issue at question is “Does the decision of a principal to prohibit the publishing of certain articles, which he deems inappropriate, in the school newspaper violate the student journalists' First Amendment right of freedom of speech”  ("Facts And Case Summary: Hazelwood V. Kuhlmeier", n.d.). There are two sides to think about when identifying the legality of these issues. On the one hand, you have the students who feel that the freedom of their voice and their newspaper is being threatened by the school’s authorities figure. On the other hand, you have the school authority that is trying to protect the school by choosing to disassociate from such controversial topics that will become easily accessible to many of the youth if they are allowed to be printed in the paper. Can any of these factors legally justify the principal’s actions in removing the articles, and would it be in violation of the student’s rights?

RULE: What provision of the First Amendment applies to the issue you have defined?

The rule that applies to the issues defined is the right to the freedom of speech. The students in the Journalism II class are in charge of writing and proofreading all expositions for “The Spectrum” as part of a class requirement. The two articles that have been removed contained topics such as teenage pregnancy and divorce. The students have given the paper to the principal for review in which the principal had decided to remove those articles from the paper as they contained controversial issues. For starters, since the article about divorce had contained personal information about a student’s parent, the principal had decided that the journalists had to inform the parent and get his permission to use such information. Another controversial issue was that simply changing the names of the students in the pregnancy articles was not enough to protect the privacy of the identities of the students that were interviewed. The content was also deemed unsuitable for the younger students. Due to these problems, the usage of these articles was prohibited. Since these pages had to be removed from the newspaper issue, the students decided that these were going against the First Amendment rights, and brought the case to the U.S. Supreme Court for evaluation ("Facts And Case Summary: Hazelwood V. Kuhlmeier", n.d.).

ANALYZE: Analyze the case, applying the law to the facts of the case.

The First Amendment protects the right to the freedom of speech. Even though these students thought that they were exercising their right, their articles still posed a lot of concern for the principal. One concern that the principal had was, although the student interviewed for the divorce article gave personal information, the journalist doing the interviewing did not notify all subjects involved in the article, such as the girl’s father who was mentioned. Another concern, was that even though the student involved in the pregnancy articles had changed their names, their identities were still able to be discovered by the students. On October 13th, 1987, the case was sent to the Eight Circuit Court and was ruled in favor of the students. The Eight Circuit deemed the principal’s decision to forbid specific articles that he found inappropriate in the school paper, to be in violation of the student’s First Amendment rights. The case was then turned over to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court had decided to reverse the decision of the Eight Circuit. The decision that was once in favor of the students had now turned toward being in favor with the school district. The school district does has the right to eliminate the article from the paper if they are found to cause educational concern ("Facts And Case Summary: Hazelwood V. Kuhlmeier", n.d.).

CONCLUSION: Draw a conclusion

On January 13th, 1988 the Supreme Court reached a decision about the case of Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier. The Supreme Court voted 5 to 3 in favor of the school district, as they believed that the school did not violate the rights of the students by taking away their freedoms of speech and of the press. Those that work in the public school districts are allowed to monitor what the students are publishing in the school newspaper to a certain extent if they are the ones that are providing monetary support for that paper. Since school newspapers published by the students are considered a limited public forum, they are not entirely subjected to the protections listed under the First Amendment. As long as the school is sponsoring the newspaper, they have the right to monitor what is going to be published in the paper, and remove whatever it is that they find controversial or inappropriate as long as it pertains to censorship that would raise educational concerns if found unmonitored. In this case, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Hazelwood School District, as their actions were not found to be disruptive toward any of the rights of the students by removing the two controversial articles from the newspaper ("Facts And Case Summary: Hazelwood V. Kuhlmeier", n.d.).

Reference

Hall, D. E. & Feldmeier, J. P. (2012). Constitutional law: Governmental powers and individual freedoms (2nd ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.

Facts and case summary: Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.uscourts.gov/educational-resources/get-involved/constitution-activities/first-amendment/freedom-press-school-newspapers/facts-case-summary.aspx

NOTE: The student that completed this FIRAC worksheet received 100% for this assignment; this is what type of detail and analysis your worksheet should include. Please use it as a reference, but select a different US Supreme Court case for your worksheet. –Professor Annotti