Oregon expands First Amendment rights for student journalists

USA Today reports:

The nation’s first law to help protect Oregon high school and college journalists from censorship by school administrations will be signed Friday by Gov. Ted Kulongoski

The Oregon law makes student journalists responsible for determining the content of school-sponsored media, and gives them the right to sue schools if they feel free-press rights have been violated.

It is the country’s first law in more than a decade to protect high school journalists, and the first ever to cover both high school and college journalists under one statute, said Warren Watson, director of J-Ideas, a First Amendment institute at Ball State University in Muncie, Ind.