Hosty v. Carter

In Hosty v. Carter, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals refused to hold liable a college administrator at Governors State University in Illinois who censored a student newspaper that was highly critical of the administration. Most disturbingly, the court chose to apply in the college context a Supreme Court decision that has been used to severely curtail the free speech rights of high school students — despite the fact that the vast majority of college students are adults, while high school students are not. Furthermore, the Seventh Circuit directly contradicted two Supreme Court decisions by holding that a student paper or group could potentially be controlled by the university merely because it received funding from mandatory student fees that are rightfully considered to belong to the student body, not the university.