Centre Daily Times v. Kleppinger
Case Number: 4:26-cv-01442-MWB
Court: U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania
Clients: Centre Daily Times, Spotlight PA, statecollege.com
Background: In 2024 and 2025, Pennsylvania State University’s Board of Trustees adopted amendments to its bylaws that censor the speech of individual members of the governing body.
Under the policy, trustees are prohibited from making “negative” or “critical” public statements about the Board, the university, and members of the Penn State community. They are also required to seek and obtain Board approval before speaking with members of the news media. Trustees who violate the policy are subject to “admonishment,” “sanction,” and even “removal.”
On behalf of the Centre Daily Times, Spotlight PA, and statecollege.com, attorneys from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and the Cornell Law School First Amendment Clinic argue that the “gag” policy infringes on journalists’ First Amendment rights to receive information from members of the Board of Trustees who wish to speak with them about university affairs. The lawsuit asks the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania to find Penn State’s policy unconstitutional and to block the university from enforcing it.
Quote: “Penn State’s gag policy not only controls what members of the Board of Trustees can say but also whether they can even speak publicly at all about the Commonwealth’s largest public university, which raises serious constitutional concerns,” said Reporters Committee attorney Paula Knudsen Burke. “Trustees who wish to share their independent insights on important issues are effectively barred from doing so, and the result is a Penn State community and broader public that’s less informed about what’s happening at an institution that reports almost $16 billion in economic impact on Pennsylvania.”
Related: This is the third lawsuit in which Reporters Committee attorneys have challenged the constitutionality of gag policies on behalf of news outlets. In 2024, a Pennsylvania county was forced to revise a policy barring its jail employees and contractors from speaking freely with the press after Reporters Committee attorneys and the Yale Law School Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic filed a First Amendment lawsuit on behalf of journalist Brittany Hailer. And earlier this year, the Village of Key Biscayne, Florida, scrapped a similar policy censoring its public employees after Reporters Committee attorneys filed a First Amendment lawsuit on behalf of the Key Biscayne Independent.
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Reporters Committee attorneys, led by Burke, have previously helped newsrooms fight for increased transparency and accountability at Penn State. In 2025, for example, Penn State’s Board of Trustees agreed to settle an open meetings lawsuit that Burke brought on behalf of Spotlight PA. As part of the settlement, the Board said it would provide training for individual trustees focused on Pennsylvania’s Sunshine Act, and offer more detailed disclosures regarding the reasons for holding nonpublic meetings.
Months later, in response to another lawsuit that Burke co-filed on behalf of Spotlight PA, a Pennsylvania court ordered the state Department of Education to provide the nonprofit newsroom with internal Penn State Board records that could shed light on how public officials are characterizing the university’s budget challenges.
Co-Counsel: Heather E. Murray of the Cornell Law School First Amendment Clinic
Filings:
2026-05-27: Complaint
2026-05-27: Exhibit 1
2026-05-27: Exhibit 2
2026-05-27: Declaration of Alice Pope
2026-05-27: Pope Exhibit A