While the full impact of Hosty should be limited to three states in the 7th Circuit, Californians have shown us before that it is better to be safe than sorry.

Shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court announced its 1988 Hazelwood decision that significantly cut back on the federal constitutional protection available to most high school student journalists under the First Amendment, the California Department of Education issued a legal advisory reminding school officials and others in that state that "California public school students still enjoy substantial 'freedom of the press' despite the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision to the contrary."

"Some people may not like the fact," the advisory went on, "but California's law bends over backwards to protect the student journalist."

As the advisory pointed out, the Court's decision in Hazelwood only clarified what the federal constitution said about students' rights. It had nothing to do with what rights students enjoyed under state law. While states cannot enforce laws that provide less protection than the First Amendment requires, they can always provide more. And in California, lawmakers had passed legislation in 1977 providing high school student journalists in their state with strong free press protections. While they had no way of knowing what the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. would do 11 years later, their extra caution ensured that the rights of California's student journalists were never in jeopardy.

In the nearly two decades since the Hazelwood decision, advocates for high school student media have sought to follow California's lead, looking to state law to shore up their free speech and press rights. So far, five other states — Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, Kansas and Massachusetts — have passed so-called anti-Hazelwood laws that essentially give back to high school student journalists the same legal protections they enjoyed prior to Hazelwood.

Because public college student media has, for nearly 40 years, enjoyed strong, consistent legal protection under the First Amendment — and because most probably assumed that free speech on an American college or university campus was simply a given — there has been no similar effort to enact state legislation protecting college student journalists.

But then came Hosty v. Carter. In 2005, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the high school-based Hazelwood decision was the "starting point" for analyzing college press censorship cases. College press freedom in the three midwestern states covered by 7th Circuit was no longer a certainty. For wannabee censors in Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin, the door to college newsrooms had been cracked open. And while the law protecting college student media officially remains strong outside the 7th Circuit, the ripples of the decision were felt far away.

Indeed, just ten days after the 7th Circuit announced its decision, an attorney for the California State University system sent a memo to CSU administrators telling them that "CSU campuses may have more latitude than previously believed to censor the content of subsidized student newspapers…."

Fortunately, in California, they had a game plan in place to deal with such threats that had worked before. If the First Amendment could no longer be counted on as a sure thing, it was time once again to look closer to home. Shortly after news of the CSU memo emerged, student press advocates in California, led by the California Newspaper Publishers Association, looked to state lawmakers for protection. What emerged was the first state college press freedom law (dare we call it an anti-Hosty law?) in the country.

Sponsored by assemblyman Leland Yee and signed into law in August by Gov. Schwarzenegger, the law prohibits prior restraint and other forms of censorship of the college press.

And once again, other states are now looking to follow California's lead. For example, after Green River Community College and Washington state officials refused to clarify the free press provisions of GRCC's student media policy, saying that Hosty gave them more control over the student newspaper, student editor Brian Schraum contacted state Rep. Dave Upthegrove and together they drafted and will soon introduce a student press bill before the Washington State legislature that, if passed, would be the most comprehensive in the country. The bill establishes a sensible balance between student rights and responsible journalism and provides an excellent model for college student media in other states looking to effectively derail misguided administrative thoughts about rolling back free press protection on their campuses.

While the full impact of Hosty should be limited, Californians have shown us before that it is better to be safe than sorry.

Mike Hiestand is an attorney, based in the far, upper left corner of the "Lower 48," and works as a legal consultant to the Student Press Law Center.