After almost two years of waiting, the case over prior restraint by the Ithaca City School District on Ithaca High School’s newspaper, The Tattler, is preparing for trial.

In a 53-page document, Chief United States District Court Judge Norman Mordue denied the school district’s request for a summary judgment for the lawsuit filed nearly four years ago by a group of high school newspaper editors. A summary judgment calls for a decision to be made immediately prior to a trial.

The lawsuit was originally filed in 2005 by the seven editors of The Tattler in response to the school district’s imposition of prior restraint, or guidelines that prevent material from being published. Ray Schlather, the attorney representing the students pro-bono, said the guidelines went against First Amendment rights.

“Our primary claims were that these guidelines … constituted prior restraint and therefore unconstitutional, even in a school setting,” he said.

The dispute between the paper staff and school district officials began in 2004, when an article published in The Tattler raised issues about the school’s new principal, Joe Wilson.

After conducting student surveys and attempting to conduct faculty surveys, Tattler editors published an article on the student’s dissatisfaction with the new principal.

In response to the 2004 article, IHS administration placed a set of guidelines on the paper, stating that articles could no longer be published without first being reviewed. After a few of the paper’s articles and cartoons were rejected for publication, Rob Ochshorn, the paper’s editor in chief at the time, resigned from his position and ran the newspaper underground.

“We put out a paper that … was clearly freedom for students to use and express themselves through,” Ochshorn said. “[They] transformed that paper into a mouthpiece of the administration.”

After returning the paper to school publishing and finding the guidelines still present, Ochshorn and the six other editors at the time filed a lawsuit in 2005 against the Ithaca City School District.

Two years passed and little was done with the case. Then in 2007, the school district filed their summary judgment, saying that they were allowed to impose guidelines on the paper, because they said it was a non-public, closed forum.

Judge Mordue spent the next two years going over the case, and last Thursday released a 53-page document detailing his decision on the request for the summary judgment. Judge Mordue dismissed the first three sections of the lawsuit dealing with the cartoon and articles published, but upheld the suit against the guidelines imposed on the paper.

Schlather said the court ruled the school district had no evidence that the guidelines were in the best interest of the paper and the student body.

“That is at the core of what this lawsuit is all about,” Schlather said. “The rights of speech and privacy are at the core of what makes us unique in the world.”

Ochshorn, now a senior at Cornell University, said The Tattler is a “real newspaper,” an outlet for students to express themselves and to be responsible journalists.

“There’s something to be said for giving students a voice where they can respond to their environment, both local and national issues, where they can write and be listened to throughout the school and the community and where they can start to take some responsibility,” he said.

Eva Ge, current editor in chief of The Tattler, said the paper gives students the opportunity to practice all types of journalism and is an asset to the students involved.

“The paper is really the voice of the students,” she said.

Schlather said the students at IHS are smart, young people and understand the journalistic ethics involved in working for a newspaper.

“The school district should nurture that sense of inquiry and journalism and should work to encourage that, as opposed to suppress it,” he said.

The case is set to go to trial in the beginning of May, unless either side appeals the decision. As of now, no decisions to appeal have been made.

Schlather said First Amendment rights are at the center of this entire lawsuit, and the ability to think freely is essential to not only The Tattler, but to the growth of students.

“It’s free speech; it’s right of privacy; it’s core fundamentals of democracy,” he said.

IHS administration and the Ithaca City School District were unavailable for comment.