A San Francisco Superior Court judge has ordered the San Francisco Unified School District to reinstate Eric Gustafson as the journalism teacher and faculty advisor to the student newspaper at Lowell High School.
Judge Van Aken ruled that Gustafson was reassigned as journalism advisor “solely for his protection of student journalists’ expressive freedom” in violation of California’s Journalism Teacher Protection Act. The school district has until Feb. 25 to reinstate him. The Voice of San Francisco previously described the lawsuit here.
Gustafson argued, and Judge Van Aken agreed, that he had been removed from his position because school administrators did not like the content of certain student articles, and not because of declining quality of the newspaper. Controversial articles that were prominent in the litigation included student-written stories about complaints of verbal harassment and inappropriate behavior of teachers; alleged drug use, and a proposed article on artificial intelligence and teaching. One article about which administrators complained was contained in an edition of the school paper that won an award from the Journalism Education Association of Northern California.
Judge Van Aken called into question the school district’s various explanations for Gustafson’s removal from his journalism positions as “not credible” and contradictory. Throughout his ordeal, Gustafson gained support from the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, the Press Club, and members of The Lowell newspaper staff.