10th Circuit Dismisses Student Journalist Claims Against University

The 10th Circuit has vacated with instructions to dismiss a lawsuit brought by two former student editors at the Collegian, the paper published at Kansas State University. The editors had sued after the University dismissed the faculty advisor. Said the court,

We have previously held that “when an individual graduates from school
there no longer exists a live controversy necessary to support an action to
participate in interscholastic activity.”…Here, too, Lane and Rice have graduated, and no longer serve on the board of the Collegian. Because defendants can no longer impinge upon plaintiffs’ exercise of freedom of the press, plaintiffs’ claims for declaratory and injunctive
relief are moot. An exception to the mootness doctrine exists for cases that are “capable of
repetition, yet evading review.” Murphy v. Hunt, 455 U.S. 478, 482 (1982)
(quotations omitted). But this exception applies only when: “(1) the challenged
action was in its duration too short to be fully litigated prior to its cessation or
expiration, and (2) there [i]s a reasonable expectation that the same complaining
party w[ill] be subjected to the same action again.” Id. (quoting Weinstein v.
Bradford, 423 U.S. 147, 149 (1975) (per curiam)); see also Seminole Nation, 321
F.3d at 943. Although Lane and Rice’s claims as student editors arguably meet the first prong of this test, they fail to satisfy the second prong. Because only
KSU students serve as editors of the Collegian, there is no reasonable expectation
that Lane and Rice will be subjected, post-graduation, to censorship by defendants
in connection with that newspaper. See id. Thus, we can carve out no exception
to the mootness doctrine for their claims. Plaintiffs have not formally sued in a representative capacity, and there has been no effort on anyone’s part to substitute current editors as parties. Student Publications, Inc., the non-profit corporate publisher, was neither named initially as a party nor has it sought to join this litigation. Amici urge us to confer thirdparty
standing to plaintiffs on behalf of current and future Collegian editors.
Given that Johnson did not appeal, and neither the publisher nor the present
editors have joined this litigation, we cannot countenance this type of end-run
around the general requirement that parties raise their own claims.

Read the entire opinion here.