Following the University of Alabama’s termination of two student-run publications, free speech and student press advocates are questioning the constitutionality of the school’s actions.
UA Vice President of Student Life Steven Hood, on Monday, told staff of Nineteen Fifty-Six and Alice Magazine, their publications were in violation of a July memo issued by U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and will be immediately suspended.
Founded in 2020, Nineteen Fifty-Six is a biannual student-run magazine “focused on Black culture, Black excellence, and Black student experiences at The University of Alabama.” The publication took its name from the year the first Black student to attend UA, Autherine Lucy Foster, enrolled in the university.
Alice is a lifestyle and fashion magazine that has produced content primarily targeted toward university women since its launch in 2015.
UA officials have argued the publications constituted “unlawful proxies,” according to the Department of Justice memo.
The memo is not legally binding and states that it serves to illustrate “best practices” or “non-binding suggestions to help entities comply with federal antidiscrimination laws and avoid legal pitfalls.”
In a letter sent to Hood and UA general counsel John Daniel on Wednesday, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s Student Press Freedom Initiative demanded the publications’ reinstatement and argued their termination violates multiple federal court precedents.
“No federal antidiscrimination law requires the university to silence these publications, and its choice to do so is a violation of their clearly established First Amendment rights,” wrote FIRE student press counsel Marie McMullan. “The university must immediately reverse these suspensions and uphold its commitment to editorial independence for its student press.”
The document goes on to criticize the university’s claim that the publications were guilty of proxy discrimination.
Bondi’s memo describes unlawful proxy discrimination as occurring “when a federally funded institution uses ostensibly neutral criteria that function as substitutes for explicit consideration of race, sex, or other protected characteristics.”
This includes requiring job applicants to demonstrate their “cultural competency,” targeting recruitment to specific geographic areas, institutions or organizations “because of their racial or ethnic composition,” as well as requiring applicants to submit a diversity statement or to describe “obstacles they have overcome.”
McMullan argued that neither publication showed evidence of discriminatory hiring practices and were instead wrongfully terminated solely because of the viewpoints and demographics their content highlighted.
The letter highlighted that both magazines allow open participation from all students “regardless of their background or identity” and that, according to UA’s student newspaper, The Crimson White, “both had hired staff who are not part of their target audiences.”
“No publicly available information indicates the university based its decision to suspend the magazines on any evidence of ‘geographic or institutional targeting’ recruitment practices, rather than the content and viewpoint focuses of Alice Magazine and Nineteen Fifty-Six,” McMullan wrote.
The letter cites the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Healy v. James, which judged that public universities are bound by the First Amendment, and the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit’s ruling Bazaar v. Fortune, which held that once a student publication is recognized by a university, the institution cannot act as a censor for the publication.
The letter states that “unlike the advice UA misused in Attorney General Bondi’s memo,” the court’s ruling in Bazaar “is legally binding on the university.”
“Just as it would be unthinkable for the university to ‘censor and forbid the publication of an article in its law school journal on the grounds that the article concerned some sensitive issue,’ it is absurd that UA believes it can or must censor Alice Magazine and Nineteen Fifty-Six because the magazines’ content focuses on issues of interest to female and black students, respectively,” the letter reads.
McMullan went on to highlight the verdict in Stanley v. Magrath, where the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that public universities may not constitutionally “take adverse action” against a student publication “because it disapproves of the content of the paper.”
Also cited were the Supreme Court’s rulings in Rosenberger v. Rectors & Visitors of the University of Virginia and Regents of the University of Wisconsin System v. Southworth.
The court ruled in Rosenberger that the University of Virginia’s denial of funding to a Christian student publication violated the First Amendment, and in Board of Regents ruled that “When a university requires its students to pay fees to support the extracurricular speech of other students, all in the interest of open discussion, it may not prefer some viewpoints over others.”
“UA’s suspension of these magazines is a brazen attack on the student press. The university must respect the First Amendment rights of these publications,” wrote McMullan.
The letter ends with a request for a “substantive response” from UA, no later than December 10, confirming the university will immediately reverse the suspension of the publications.
The Student Press Law Center’s senior legal counsel Mike Hiestand offered similar criticisms of UA’s actions against the publications in a statement released on X Wednesday.
“At a public university, student media are forums for independent student expression and are protected by the First Amendment,” Hiestand wrote.
“The Supreme Court has made clear that viewpoint discrimination is off-limits, and it’s difficult to imagine a more straightforward example than a university openly acknowledging it,” he continued. “By shutting down only the magazines that primarily serve women and Black students – while leaving other publications alone—it looks a lot like they are targeting a particular point of view.”
Hiestand added that he was unaware of any other universities targeting student publications with the DOJ memo as justification.
“If they have, I encourage those students to contact us through SPLC’s Legal Hotline,” he added.
PEN America, a free expression nonprofit that focuses on the rights of writers, also condemned the publications’ closure on social media.
“Student journalism is dealt a blow as the nationwide crackdown on DEI causes the shuttering of two magazines at U. Alabama,” the organization wrote. “Student voices continue to be silenced in this ongoing assault on free speech.”
Since the publications were terminated, a letter to the editor signed by 80 UA student publication alumni, describing the university’s actions as “the beginning of a slippery slope of censorship for all student media,” was released by the Crimson White.
The publication’s editorial board also released an op-ed criticizing the university’s actions and plans to establish a publication to replace Alice and Nineteen Fifty-Six, while calling on UA’s Student Government Association to pass a resolution formally condemning the closures.
An online petition calling for the reinstatement of Alice and Nineteen Fifty-Six has currently garnered more than 2,500 signatures.
