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A high schooler (E.D.) started a pro-life club, which the principal later suspended after E.D. declined to revise flyers with political slogans and images that she wanted to hang in an area the school provided, leading to a First Amendment challenge that the rejection and suspension rested on hostility to pro-life views. In an opinion by a panel of the Seventh Circuit, of which E.D. seeks rehearing en banc, the court affirmed dismissal of her claims, largely under the Supreme Court’s Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier decision, which gives K-12 administrators authority over certain school-sponsored speech—in that case a student-produced newspaper with what the school thought were journalistically deficient articles that were unsuitably mature for a young audience. Notably, however, the E.D. panel opinion relied on nonbinding dicta in Hazelwood regarding the ability of administrators to censor student speech for purposes of disassociating the school from it.

In the amicus brief, ������ýapp�ٷ�, joined by Tully Center for Free Speech, Student Press Law Center, and several First Amendment scholars, urges the Seventh Circuit to vacate the panel opinion and rehear the case en banc to clarify that Hazelwood’s “disassociation dicta” is not binding and should not be followed. Doing so gives us the opportunity to narrow the reach of Hazelwood, which courts have come to use broadly to ratify K-12 censorship of student speech in activities that administrators claim are school-sponsored.