blog

California State Senate passed a bill that would protect journalism advisers and other teachers against retaliation by administrators because of student speech. Originally called the Journalism Teacher Protection Act, the bill was created to prevent "an employee from being dismissed, suspended, disciplined, reassigned, transferred, or otherwise retaliated against for" protecting student free speech. The bill originally passed through the Senate this past April, but when the University of California Office of the President said it would not accept the measure due to reservations that the bill would restrict the university’s ability to discipline faculty members, the bill was altered to allow administrators to remove teacher advisers for poor performance. The bill has yet to be signed by Governor Schwarzenegger, who is busy tending to the state budget crisis, but the bill’s sponsor, Senator Leland Yee, expects it to be signed into law before October.

More from the Student Press Law Center
More from the Associated Press
More from the University of California at Davis
A correction from the University of California at Davis
Read this NSNS post about the original bill