SAN FRANCISCO -- A California high school principal pulled a planned student newspaper story on AIDS within hours of Wednesday's Supreme Court decision giving school officials power to censor the student press.
Jim Warren, principal of Homestead High School in Cupertino, Calif., ordered students to shelve a story scheduled to appear Friday in The Epitaph, an award-winning student newspaper, and asked that it be held until he could determine if it increased his oversight obligations.
Editor Mike Calcagno, 18, said he considers the action an unconstitutional prior restraint of publication, and he intends to have the story printed even over the principal's objections.
'He can see us in court,' Calcagno said by telephone from the newspaper office.
The story, written by Kathryn Pallakoff, 17, concerns an unidentified student who purportedly is infected with the AIDS virus, Warren said.
The Supreme Court decision Wednesday upheld the authority of a high school principal in the Hazelwood School District in Missouri to remove pages from the high school newspaper because they included articles about teenage pregnancy and divorce.
Warren said he has no objection to the content of the student story, but once he heard about the Hazelwood decision, he wanted to decide if he had broader censorship powers.
Calcagno said he has received three legal opinions, including one from the California Department of Education, that the Hazelwood decision does not apply in California.
The American Civil Liberties Union has agreed to back Calcagno and the students, according to ACLU attorney Margaret Kegel.
This response to the Supreme Court ruling 'is our worst fear ... that school officials could use it as an excuse to censor,' Kegel said.
She said California law gives broader rights to the students and protects against censorship. The ruling on the Missouri case 'has no impact on California,' she said.
Warren said if he can be convinced of the dominance of the broader California law, he will let the story run.
The paper, which has won several national awards, has covered such issues as gay teens, use of fake addresses to register for Homestead, a Scholastic Aptitude Test cheating ring, and a computer hacker who tapped school files, Calcagno said.
Warren called the student reporters 'incredibly responsible journalists and wonderful young professionals.'
He said he included a science lecture on AIDS to teachers at a recent faculty meeting so they would be better prepared to answer questions once the story appeared.
