Dive Brief:
- Student journalists sued University of Alabama trustees on Monday over the public institution’s sudden suspension of two campus magazines geared toward women and Black students.
- University leaders told student staff in December that they had suspended Alice and Nineteen Fifty-Six magazines because the publications “target primarily specific groups” and therefore ran afoul of Trump administration guidance on racial and gender discrimination, according to plaintiffs’ complaint.
- In their lawsuit, the plaintiffs argued the suspensions violated First Amendment protections against censorship and viewpoint discrimination. They asked a federal court to declare the university's decision unconstitutional and to restore the publications and funding.
Dive Insight:
Nineteen Fifty-Six — named after the year the University of Alabama briefly enrolled its first Black student — launched in 2020. Alice, named to be a counterpart to the university's mascot Big AI, began publishing five years prior in 2015. Both magazines were student run but funded and operated by the University of Alabama’s Office of Student Media.
Killing Alice and Nineteen Fifty-Six stripped students of opportunities to build their portfolios and craft media content for established and high-quality publications aligned with their interests, plaintiffs argued.
“Nineteen Fifty-Six and Alice have always provided a platform for diverse voices and perspectives that are vital for fostering an inclusive community amongst students on campus,” Rihanna Pointer, a multi-media editor for Nineteen Fifty-Six and plaintiff in the case, said in a Monday statement.
On Tuesday, a University of Alabama spokesperson declined to comment on the lawsuit.
According to the plaintiffs’ complaint, Steven Hood, University of Alabama’s vice president of student life, told the magazines' staffs in December that the suspension stemmed from Alice and Nineteen Fifty-Six's target audiences, not the publications' content. The official pointed to a July memo from U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi with Trump administration guidance on discrimination.
Alice's Editor-in-Chief Gabrielle Gunter, a graduate student and plaintiff in the case, told Hood and other university administrators the magazine “is published for everyone and that Alice never excluded anyone from participating on the editorial board or contributing to the magazine,” according to the lawsuit.
Staff roles and contributions for both magazines were open to all University of Alabama students, according to each publication's website.
Hood, according to the complaint, told Gunter he understood her concern "but that the magazine nevertheless appears to be a magazine for women.”
A university spokesperson alluded to the “compliance landscape” in explaining the suspensions to The Crimson White in December.
The spokesperson told the student newspaper then that the university is required to “ensure all members of our community feel welcome to participate in programs that receive university funding from the Office of Student Media.”
A petition to restore the publications has garnered over 3,000 signatures. Replacement independent versions of each of the magazines, with new titles, plan to run their first issues next month.
Bondi’s July memo cited by university administration threatened to strip grant funding from colleges and other federally funded institutions over a radical reimagining of anti-discrimination laws. It targets numerous practices, some longstanding at many institutions such as racial criteria for scholarships and fellowships, and identity-based study or events spaces.
Attorneys for the students suing University of Alabama — who are represented by the Legal Defense Fund, the American Civil Liberties Union of Alabama and the Southern Poverty Law Center — pointed out that Bondi’s memo makes no mention of student-run publications or other media. Moreover, they argued, the memo is nonbinding.
They also noted that a federal court struck down a similar tactic tried by the U.S. Department of Education to target DEI.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs argued in the complaint that University of Alabama’s stated reasons for suspending the magazines over their target audiences constitutes “a prohibited form of viewpoint discrimination.”
“The government cannot exclude speech because it believes the viewpoints expressed may be of particular interest to women and Black students,” they said.
