During spring break, New Voices activists Faye Zayed, Charlotte Schwarte, Erick Garcia, Ava Weaver and Elizabeth Yowell talked to legislative aides about supporting House Bill 4821, a bill that would establish student press freedoms not allowed under the current Supreme Court precedent established by the 1988 decision in Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier.
The Hazelwood standard enables a principal to review student publications before they are published and censor student journalists if the principal deems that their expression raises “legitimate pedagogical concerns.”
Under the provisions of HB 4821, principals in Texas would not be able to censor school newspapers and would afford student journalists the same First Amendment protections to free speech enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. The limits on student journalists’ free speech would mirror the limits put on professional journalists’ free speech. They would not be permitted to publish content that is obscene, defamatory, violates a law or promotes violating a law or substantially disrupts the school’s operation. Advisers would also be protected from facing retaliatory administrative action for their students’ exercise of their free speech rights.
On March 17, as they have several times since 2019, New Voices Texas student leaders sought to gain bipartisan support for a New Voices bill in the current legislative session. The current bill, HB 4821, was filed for the current legislative session by Rep. Gina Hinojosa.
Students visited an array of figures, including the office of Sen. Angela Paxton, R-Collin, Hunt and Rains counties northeast of Dallas. Bowie Bowie High School students Elizabeth Yowell and Ava Weaver spoke to Paxton’s legislative aide. Weaver and Yowell advocated for HB 4821, presenting it as directly linked to their First Amendment press freedom rights, and spoke of instances in which their peers endured censorship and prior restraint. Weaver spoke about visiting Rep. Andy Hopper, R-Denton and Wise counties northwest of Fort Worth.
“His meeting was very interesting,” Weaver said. “We talked to one of his legislative aides, and even though he was Republican, he sat down with us for 20 minutes, which was surprising. It was my first meeting with a legislative office, and I was really nervous. He had questions I didn’t even think about, and I had to adjust my perspective. He focused on the perspective of the principals, and as a student I’m more focused on the student perspective, so I was able to change my argument to apply to principals and apply to a more Republican point of view.”
Fellow Bowie student Charlotte Schwarte, who’s also a New Voices officer for south central Texas, explained the jurisprudential objective of HB 4821 in promoting press freedom.
“We’re trying to restore it to the Tinker standard, which was taken away by the Hazelwood ruling,” Schwarte said. “It has very unclear wording—it basically says if there are ‘pedagogical concerns,’ an adviser, administrator or principal can interpret that however they want, and they can censor publications however they deem fit. With the Tinker standard, that wouldn’t be possible, because there’s very clear wording on what we’re able to publish.”
David Doerr, adviser-officer for New Voices Texas and the journalism adviser at Akins High School, discussed instances in which the Hazelwood standard has been abused by administrators.
“There have been some public cases that have been egregious”, Doerr said. “There was a case that happened in Prosper, in 2018. That one got a lot of attention because it involved some really prominent, veteran journalism teachers and the students were savvy about getting public attention. They went to some publications to help shed light on what was happening at their school, and it became public. Unfortunately, that doesn’t happen a lot. A lot of people are concerned that if they go to the professional press, that it’ll make their situations worse than they already are, and so they don’t want to talk about it publicly.”
If HB 4821 makes it through the House, it may eventually advance to the Senate, where it has an ally in Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas County, who has voiced his support for the bill.
Filed for the current legislative session by Rep. Gina Hinojosa, D-Austin, and co-authored by Rep. Diego Bernal, D-San Antonio, vice chairman of the Education Committee, the New Voices bill was originally sponsored in 2019 by Rep. Mary González, D-El Paso, as HB 2244. The bill received bi-partisan support and made it out of the Public Education committee but it died in the Calendar Committee which never scheduled the bill for a vote before the 86th session expired. After the pandemic in 2020,
González pushed forward New Voices legislation again in 2021 as HB 422, but the bill never was even scheduled for a committee hearing. The New Voices mantle was picked up in 2023, but Rep. Erin Zwiener, D-Hays County, but the bill she authored and sponsored, HB 5266, also did not even receive an education committee hearing.
Currently, 18 states have New Voices laws on the books to protect student journalists in their state. Minnesota was the most recent on May 17, 2024. In addition to Texas, New Voices bills have been introduced in seven other states: Arizona, Connecticut, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, Pennsylvania and New York.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story reported that Rep. Diego Bernal, D-San Antonio, co-authored HB 4821. Rep. Bernal has expressed verbal support for the bill, and New Voices Texas faculty sponsor David Doerr said that his organization is hopeful that Rep. Bernal will add his name to the bill as a co-author, but he has yet to do so.
