478 F.2d 1345: Fred Baughman As Parent and on Behalf of Lynne Baughman Andbeth Baughman, Minors et al., Appellants, v. William Freienmuth, President, Montgomery County Board Ofeducation et al., Appellees

This is another freedom of speech case in the high school context. We are asked to extend our decision in Quarterman v. Byrd, 453 F.2d 54 (4th Cir. 1971) to prohibit any prior restraint based on content from being exercised by school officials over written material to be distributed on school grounds. We decline to do so. However, the application of Quarterman to this case requires that the decision of the district court be vacated insofar as it fails to grant the plaintiffs the complete relief to which they are entitled.

The plaintiffs, parents on behalf of their children in the Montgomery County school system, brought this action seeking injunctive and declaratory relief against the Montgomery County Board of Education, its members and officers, and against the Maryland State Board of Education. The complaint attacked certain regulations (contained in a policy statement re-issued September 20, 1971) as an unlawful prior restraint on the distribution of non-school sponsored literature in violation of the first amendment.

Distribution of a pamphlet criticizing the prior restraint regulations resulted in a warning letter from the principal and subsequently the commencement of this litigation. As in Quarterman, we need not assess the content of the pamphlet; we are concerned only with the consitutional validity of the September 20, 1971, regulations and the scope of further relief to which plaintiffs are entitled.

The challenged regulations of the board provide in relevant part:

Under the following procedures, student publications produced without school sponsorship may be distributed in schools: