YOUR RIGHT TO KNOW--Open Government and Freedom of Information in California

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Leland Yee, Ph.D.
Assistant President pro Tem
California State Senate

Recently newspapers, broadcasters, online media outlets, schools, libraries, and civic groups across the country celebrated open government with Sunshine Week 2008. Here in California, I am working with First Amendment and public access advocates, teachers, students, and labor unions on a series of bills to provide greater transparency of government and increase public access to records that rightfully belong to the people. These bills range from protecting state whistleblowers and student speech rights to allowing public access of government contracts and reviewing of audits.

Protecting Journalism Teachers and Student Speech

This week, the California Senate approved legislation to protect high school and college teachers and other employees from retaliation by administrators as a result of student speech, which most often happens when a journalism advisor or professor is disciplined for content in a student newspaper. With this vote, California continues to lead the way in making sure true freedom of the press is alive and well on our campuses. Senate Bill 1370 follows a 2006 law I authored to prohibit censorship of college press by administrators and protect students from being disciplined for engaging in speech or press activities.

Allowing a school administration to censor in any way is contrary to the democratic process and the ability of a student newspaper to serve as the watchdog and bring sunshine to the actions of school administrators. It is quite disheartening to hear, that after we specifically prohibited prior restraint by administrators, that some are engaging in this type of nefarious activity and even firing quality teachers because of content in the student newspaper.

Specifically, SB 1370 would prohibit an employee from being dismissed, suspended, disciplined, reassigned, transferred, or otherwise retaliated against for acting to protect a student’s speech.

There have been a number of documented cases throughout the state of journalism advisors being dismissed or reassigned due to student speech. In fact, my office has learned of cases in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Claremont, Fremont, Novato, Oxnard, Rialto, and Garden Grove.