Penn State University ‘gag’ policy violates First Amendment, newsrooms argue in lawsuit

Attorneys from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press are representing three news outlets in a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of a Pennsylvania State University policy that censors the speech of the school’s trustees, making it harder for journalists to report news about the state’s largest university. 

In a complaint filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, the Centre Daily Times, Spotlight PA, and statecollege.com argue that changes to Penn State’s bylaws in 2024 and 2025 infringe on journalists’ First Amendment rights to receive information from members of the Board of Trustees who wish to speak with them about university affairs. 

Penn State’s Board is the governing body responsible for setting tuition, approving budgets, and establishing the long-term goals of the public university, which currently enrolls more than 85,000 students across 20 campuses statewide, including its main campus in University Park. 

Under the “gag” policy, individual 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.”

“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.”

The recent amendments to the gag policy have already impacted trustees’ willingness to speak out about university affairs. In a declaration submitted in support of the lawsuit, emerita trustee Alice Pope said she received a letter from three members of the Board stating that she violated the policy last year when she made public comments critical of Penn State’s decision to close seven of its 20 campuses, including in an op-ed published on statecollege.com. 

“As a result,” she stated in the declaration, “I have become more cautious and selective about what I say publicly, even when I believe speaking would benefit the University and its community.”

The lawsuit names as defendants three trustees who have the power to enforce the gag policy: Board Chair David Kleppinger, Vice Chair Richard Sokolov, and Governance Committee Chair Dan Onorato.

The newsrooms are represented by Burke and Renee Griffin from the Reporters Committee, as well as Heather E. Murray of the Cornell Law School First Amendment Clinic.

This is the third lawsuit in which Reporters Committee attorneys have challenged the constitutionality of gag policies on behalf of the news media. 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. 

Reporters Committee attorneys, led by Burke, have previously helped newsrooms fight for increased transparency and accountability at Penn State. Last year, for example, Penn State’s Board 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 a separate lawsuit that Burke and Murray 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.

Read more coverage about the lawsuit from the Centre Daily Times, Spotlight PA, and statecollege.com.