Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier

Although the story about pregnancy had used false names, Reynolds believed that it might be too easy to identify the students and their boyfriends, thus violating their right to privacy. He also believed that the discussion of sexual activity and birth control in the article would not be appropriate reading matter for the younger students at the school.

The story about divorce included a student's complaint that her father had not spent "enough time with my mom, my sister and I" before the divorce, along with her perception that her father "was always out of town on business or out late playing cards with the guys" and "always argued about everything" with her mother. Reynolds was upset that the student was identified by name, because he thought her parents, particularly her father, should then have been given the chance to respond to this criticism. He did not realize that the student's name had in fact been deleted from the final version of the article.

It might have been possible to fix the problems in the articles, to delay publication, or to have solved the problems in some other way, but the teacher who had run the paper all year had left to take a job in private industry, and Emerson, the new teacher, either was not aware of all the options or did not think to mention them to the principal. So Reynolds, believing he had to act quickly, removed not just the two offending articles, but the entire page that each was on, even though he had no objection to the other articles on the two pages.

The students who ran the paper were furious. They claimed that their First Amendment rights to free speech and free press had been violated. They took their case to court. Eventually, their case was reviewed by the Supreme Court.