Stolen student newspapers

Q: I am a part of a public college newspaper in California. We are dealing with a problem right now that we need some legal advice on.

We have in the past been having problems with newspapers getting stolen off our campus racks. Primarly by our Student Senate (who pays for some of our printing cost). We are working on developing a policy with the College district on preventing this from ccurring again and to have a disciplinary action taken on the ones that violate this policy.

The problem is we don\'t know where to start and if public colleges like ours have policies that protect the paper. And if so we need to get copies or outlines that will help us get started. We believe that the college hopes that we drop this matter, but it is important to protect our paper. If you can give us any help or some type of direction as to where to look to get this information that would be very helpful.

A: As you probably already know, yours is not the first student newspaper to face this problem, and in several cases universities have taken disciplinary action against students who stole newspapers. In 2003, the Student Press Law Center reported that three students at the University of Wisconsin at River Falls received non-academic probation for stealing more than 2,000 copies of the student newspaper. At Framingham State College in Massachusetts, three football players and one female student were disciplined for stealing 1,000 copies of the student paper. And two students at South Dakota State University were disciplined for stealing 2,325 copies of The Collegiate in what editors said was an attempt to stifle an editorial endorsement of a candidate for student government.

It would seem to make sense that colleges should have a policy of disciplining students for stealing student newspapers because stealing even free newspapers is violation of both criminal and civil law. We have addressed this issue in the past on behalf of another of our clients, The Daily Californian at UC Berkeley. When The Daily Cal learned that Student Action, a campus student political group, was interfering with distribution of the newspaper, we sent the organization a letter explaining that such action "constitutes trespass, among other things, and interference with [the newspaper's] relations with its advertisers, all in violation of state law. Such actions are subject both to civil litigation, see Coming Up, Inc. v. City and County of San Francisco, 857 F. Supp. 711, 714-16 (N.D. Cal. 1994) (publisher may sue for interference with distribution of free newspaper), and criminal prosecution. See M.L. Stein, "Man Arrested for Pilfering Newsracks," Editor & Publisher, April 22, 1995 (Berkeley man criminally prosecuted for taking free papers and selling them to recycling company)."

A recent federal Court of Appeals decision also held that government officials may be sued under 42 U.S.C. section 1983 for violating a newspaper's First Amendment rights by intentionally suppressing the dissemination of that newspaper to its intended readership. Rossignol v. Voorhaar, 316 F.3d 516 (4th Cir. 2003). It is less clear whether government officials -- such as public college officials, for example -- could be sued for allowing such First Amendment violations to continue by refusing to take steps to curb the violations.