In 1989, then-Southwest Texas State University (SWT) sent a warning to the Hays County Guardian: Its student employees would no longer be allowed to hand out copies of the free local newspaper on campus.
The publisher of the paper was something of a firebrand. Two years later, he’d be arrested for a demonstration in favor of marijuana legalization that mostly amounted to him smoking a joint at the San Marcos Police Department headquarters. But the administrators at SWT—now Texas State University—had found a way to launder their problems with the Guardian through hyper-specific regulations about how commercial publications could be distributed on campus. Distribution of free newspapers containing advertisements was banned on campus with three exceptions, all of which were onerous for an independent newspaper with a small budget.
So the Guardian sued several SWT administrators and the Texas State University System Board of Regents. After a federal district judge ruled against the paper, finding that SWT’s campus wasn’t a public forum, the Guardian turned to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans. Despite its recent hostility to First Amendment claims, the appellate court was receptive to the newspaper’s arguments.
