Student journalists’ free press rights tested at Marin high school after censorship claims

ADMINISTRATORS AT AN AFFLUENT Marin County high school district appear to have twice recently violated a state law that protects the First Amendment and free press rights of student journalists at an award-winning newspaper, the Redwood Bark. 

It began with revelations pulled from the Epstein files and was followed by accusations of antisemitism over a news photo. 

In both instances, student journalists’ rights under a 1977 California landmark law giving them the autonomy to publish news without interference from principals and other school leaders appear to have been ignored, First Amendment lawyers said.

The first incident involved censoring a news item after it was published online. It involved local references that student journalists at Redwood High School culled from the so-called “Epstein files,” the massive trove of investigative records released in late December by the U.S. Department of Justice related to the sex trafficking investigation of the late financier, Jeffrey Epstein.

That news item was posted in February on Instagram, a platform the Bark often uses to report news, and then removed from public view. It was later restored.

In the other instance, administrators ordered an investigation of the paper’s editorial processes after receiving complaints about a photo taken at a protest in San Francisco. 

Student journalists clashing with school officials is nothing new — administrators often want to put schools in the best light, while students want to practice journalism. In 1977, California passed the landmark, first-in-the-nation Student Free Expression Law, which gives student journalists and their advisers the right to report and publish news without interference or retaliation from school leaders.

In February, the Bark’s then-adviser, Erin Schneider, told the principal of Redwood High School in Larkspur and the superintendent of the Tamalpais Union High School District that their actions raised “concerns about press censorship and unethical oversight from the district out of alignment” with state law, emails EdSource obtained show.

Schneider, a former newspaper reporter, has since taken an unpaid leave of absence in protest through June 2027. She told parents and students in a letter that she’d encountered “significant resistance” to doing her job. She said she’s unsure if she will return to the position she’s held for 13 years.

In recent years, there have been multiple instances of California school leaders interfering with student journalism, including a lawsuit that recently concluded in which a newspaper adviser won his job back after a judge found he had been removed for his students’ pointed reporting. A similar case is headed for trial in San Jose. 

Tensions between school leaders and student reporters can escalate when administrators who try to influence publications “don’t know anything about journalism,” said Eric Gustafson, the San Francisco adviser who won his job back after a judge ruled he had been improperly transferred.  

Such attempts to censor student journalists’ rights have been rising, according to the Student Press Law Center, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that supports university and high school student journalists.  

Both instances at Redwood High School occurred at a time when news organizations and journalists face increasing pressures, and trust in journalism is low.

It’s that climate that concerned Susan Harris, the mother of a Bark editor, as she gathered more than 300 signatures on a petition asking the district school board to create a policy endorsing student reporters’ rights granted by state law.

“What’s going on in the world with journalists, how they’re being silenced, I just wanted the young journalists to know that that’s not right,” she said. 

It started with the Epstein files

What’s going on at the Bark is “at a whole other level,” Tracy Anne Sena, president of the Journalism Education Association of Northern California, said in an interview. 

“Administrators don’t like complaints, they don’t want to deal with complaints,” Sena said, adding, “I think it’s a wrongly placed mindset if you squelch the kids.”

The Bark, where staffers call themselves Barkies, has served Redwood High in Larkspur, a few miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge, since 1958. It frequently wins national awards for its journalism.

The recent tumult began with an ambitious reporting proposal. Bark journalists would cull the Epstein files for any mentions of affluent Marin. They were doing something other journalists around the country were doing — localizing a story that was getting global attention.

The journalists found more than 5,000 such references, posting many of them on Instagram. In one referencing the city of Mill Valley, they noted that the government records identified a French national, Gisele Attias Bonnouvrier, as “providing models to Epstein.” She was associated with two companies that appeared to have connections to Mill Valley, but they could not be traced, students reported.

Although the Bark didn’t mention it, Justice Department records show Bonnouvrier may be associated with a European company called Mill Valley Connection.

On Feb. 23, Redwood High Principal Barnaby Payne received an email from a person identifying as Bonnouvrier demanding her name be removed from the report and threatening to sue if it wasn’t. Payne quickly alerted Schneider, the Bark’s adviser, and sent the demand to Tamalpais Union High School District Superintendent Courtney Goode.

Schneider soon heard back from the principal. “I have a directive from the cabinet and superintendent to redact the one name immediately from the post,” he wrote, according to a copy of his email that Schneider provided EdSource.

‘Absolutely protected by California law’

Mike Hiestand, senior legal counsel at the Student Press Law Center, called Payne’s email “a smoking gun. It’s a direct order to the adviser to break the law.”

The center provides student journalists with legal advice, which the Bark reporters sought. Hiestand told them that publishing the woman’s name was legally sound.

“We looked at it and there was absolutely nothing unlawful,” he said. It was “absolutely protected by California law.”

The project’s lead reporter, junior Ben Mueller, said in an interview that he “was a little flummoxed by the initial communications from the district” because he knew that simply reporting what was included in government records — like the woman’s name and what the record said about her — didn’t constitute libel.

Schneider said the pressure of being told what to do by the school superintendent and the principal, whom they have to interact with daily, weighed on the students. They decided to archive the Instagram post, effectively complying with Goode’s directive to censor the woman’s name.

“They complied out of fear,” Schneider told district union leaders in a March 4 email. The students later restored the post. It remains published as of April 23.

In an email to EdSource, Bonnouvrier denied providing women to Epstein. Asked if she heard back from anyone at the school about her request to censor her name, she wrote: “They told me they will remove my name,” adding, “Nobody is allowed to mention my full name.”

‘District bears responsibility’

Given the students’ legal protections, any decision by school leaders to order published news content removed — an action known as prior restraint — could only be issued after “a very thorough legal analysis,” said David Loy, legal counsel for The First Amendment Coalition, a Marin County-based press rights group.

School administrators “can’t just issue a takedown order because someone was offended,” Loy said.

Goode said he believes “very strongly in student press and students controlling the editorial process. But when questions are raised about potential legal implications, it’s really important we pause to make sure that those interests and issues are fully understood.”

Goode said no legal analysis was done before issuing the directive to remove the woman’s name.

“The district bears responsibility to ensure we’re not exposing the district, our students, and really our taxpayers, to legal liability,” he told EdSource.

Loy said Goode’s concerns were “not a legitimate reason to censor. There’s no exception in the law that says you can censor something that might cost the district money.”

A few days after the take-down order, Goode met with the students and Schneider, the students’ then-adviser. He told them “he was trying to avoid a lawsuit,” Schneider said. She said the students told him that that was not a reason to censor their work.

A local newspaper, the Marin Independent Journal, published an April 1 story on Schneider going on leave and discussing pressures she said she faced in the role. In answer to a question, Goode is quoted by the paper as saying he didn’t know of any attempts to censor the Bark despite the takedown request issued on Feb 24.

Goode interpreted the reporter’s question about censorship “as a broad fishing expedition,” he told EdSource. “I asked for clarity as to what (the reporter) was referring to. I got no response.”

Protest photo called into question

In another incident, the Bark sent a photographer to a large Jan. 30 student protest in San Francisco’s Dolores Park as part of a national demonstration against the Trump administration’s deportation policies.

Among the photos submitted for publication was one showing young people holding a banner with “Students Fight Back” printed in large letters. Below those words, in smaller letters, were three subjects of their fight, each preceded by the word “Against”: “Zionism,” “Trump’s Billionaire Agenda” and “Mass Deportation.”

The Bark’s staff votes on what photos to publish, Schneider said. The photo of the banner received more than 50% of the tally and was published on the cover of the paper’s Feb. 4 print edition, on its website and on Instagram. The Bark publishes in print about every six weeks.

The reaction was swift.

Someone tagged the Instagram post, accusing the paper of being akin to the Ku Klux Klan.

In a Feb. 27 complaint to school leaders, a person named Lee Howard wrote in an email, “I am worried that Redwood’s student paper decided to publish an image of a protest slogan about Zionism that has increasingly been used as an antisemitic slur.” Howard did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

“… (W)e recognize that publishing choices, including which photo becomes a cover, carry weight and require thoughtful discussion and diverse perspectives. We are deeply sorry that the photo brought up historical hurt and made students, families and community members feel confused or unseen.”
Redwood Bark editorial

In response, the Bark’s three editors-in-chief published what they called a reflection, writing, “our responsibility is to present reality as it occurred.”

“At the same time, we recognize that publishing choices, including which photo becomes a cover, carry weight and require thoughtful discussion and diverse perspectives. We are deeply sorry that the photo brought up historical hurt and made students, families and community members feel confused or unseen.” 

On March 4, Jeanine Evains-Robinson, the district’s senior director of student services, sent Schneider an email with the subject line, “Notification of Investigation Regarding ‘Bark Cover Story,’ writing that, “an independent investigator will be assigned to conduct a thorough and neutral review of the complaints filed.”

Superintendent Goode would not say how many complaints were received, and the district rejected an EdSource public records request for all complaints related to the photo. He told EdSource he had no choice but to order a formal investigation of how the photo was chosen for publication, assigning it to a national law firm specializing in education law, Fagem Friedman and Fulfrost. He described the investigation as “open and ongoing,” repeatedly declining to provide further details.

“By law, our kids are compelled to come to school. We are obligated and compelled to provide them with an environment free of harassment and discrimination,” he said.

Asked whether an investigation of the newspaper’s internal processes of selecting what to publish would trample on the students’ autonomy granted by law, Goode said it wouldn’t. He said the probe could be completed without “limiting their rights as student journalists.”

Loy, the legal counsel of the First Amendment Coalition, rejected that claim.

“A lawyer from the district interrogating (student journalists) about their editorial process, and discretion inherently exerts a chilling effect,” he said.

Students were conflicted

Schneider described the students as “conflicted, with some questioning if ‘they have a right to publish the news photo or not.’ ”
Loy reiterated that right is unequivocal.

“The mere publication of a single news photograph, even on a topic that may be potentially controversial, can’t ever amount to discrimination or harassment,” he said, “It’s simply, transparently, impossible as a matter of law.”

One of the Bark’s editors-in-chief, Morgan Sicklick, a senior, said the district sent a person to talk to staffers about antisemitism after the photo was published. “We didn’t think (what was) provided was really that necessary,” she said. 

Sicklick noted that she and several other students are Jewish, and the fallout from the criticism has “been pretty hard, especially being an editor-in-chief and to continue and keep everybody’s heads up.”

The paper’s web designer, Zander Hakimi, a junior, said in an interview that the protest photo “was relevant. I didn’t expect people to be talking about it like it was an endorsement. It’s a news picture. People think everything is about them.”

Both the response to the photo and the administration’s demand to censor the Epstein post have unified the Barkies, Hakimi said. “It’s pretty clear to the district that we can’t be pushed around. This has made journalism more appealing to me.”

This story originally appeared in EdSource.