Though the IDS sits in a precarious financial position and receives university dollars, Mike Hiestand, senior legal counsel at the Student Press Law Center, said it does not give the university a license to control its content. He said the university's attempt to control what goes into the paper constitutes "blatant censorship."
The student publication is protected under the Public Forum Doctrine, he said. Once a government entity such as a public university establishes a designated public forum, such as a student newspaper, he said, it's up to those who use that forum to use it as they wish.
The university can cut costs for content-neutral reasons, such as a widespread budget cut, Hiestand said. However, previous court decisions have deemed it unconstitutional for universities to use the power of the purse to force a student publication to bend to its editorial will, he said.
https://eu.indystar.com/story/news/education/2025/10/15/indiana-university-orders-student-newspaper-ids-to-stop-printing/86709732007/The public forum doctrine is an analytical tool used in First Amendment jurisprudence to determine the constitutionality of speech restrictions implemented on government property. Courts employ this doctrine to decide whether groups should have access to engage in expressive activities on such property.
Most scholars trace the lineage of the public forum doctrine to Justice Owen J. Roberts’s opinion in Hague v. Committee for Industrial Organization (1939), in which he wrote: “Wherever the title of streets and parks may rest, they have immemorially been held in trust for the use of the public and, time out of mind, have been used for purposes of assembly, communicating thoughts between citizens, and discussing public questions. Such use of the streets and public places has, from ancient times, been a part of the privileges, immunities, rights, and liberties of citizens.”
First Amendment scholar Harry Kalven Jr. wrote of the concept in a law review article in 1965 titled “The Concept of the Public Forum: Cox v. Louisiana.” The term public forum, however, did not appear in First Amendment cases until the 1970s, and public forum doctrine did not appear until the 1980s.
https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/public-forum-doctrine/
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