A year ago Bakersfield high-school journalists and gay and lesbian students faced censorship over stories in their newspaper. Now a judge has approved a free-speech policy that will protect future student journalists tackling important topics.

"It shows student journalists still have the right to think about and explore more sensitive issues, such as homosexuality, in an in-depth, educational manner," former Kernal editor Maria Krauter told a Bakersfield newspaper.

Krauter and her Kernal colleagues were set to run a four-story spread about on-campus views of homosexuality in April 2005. But at the eleventh hour the school's principal pulled the stories, citing unnamed threats to gay and lesbian students.

The stories were eventually published in November 2005, but the ACLU/SC's lawsuit continued to win a new policy that requires administrators to consider alternatives before censoring students.

"From day one the students knew they had been wrongly censored and vowed to make sure this didn't happen to the next generation of Kern students," said ACLU/SC attorney Christine Sun, who represented the students. "Under this policy, the students would not have been censored in the first place."

November 25, 1986: Ryan Thomas, a 5-year-old Atascadero kindergartner infected with the AIDS virus, was readmitted to school after the ACLU/SC intervened. The boy scuffled with another student and was kicked out of school by administrators afraid he would transmit AIDS to his classmates.

But a court found that five years after AIDS was first identified in the U.S., medical evidence showed "there is really nothing to fear from this child." The ACLU/SC Open Forum called it the first federal decision allowing children with HIV/AIDS to attend school. Ryan Thomas died on Thanksgiving Day in 1991.

The ACLU continues to fight the stigma of HIV status and protect the privacy of people with HIV/AIDS. We also are working to expand treatment in jails, nursing homes and other facilities where people with the virus do not have equal access. An estimated 1 million Americans live with HIV/AIDS, and as many as 280,000 people with the virus may not know they are infected, according to evidence cited in a 2003 report by the ACLU AIDS Project. Click here to read the report (pdf).

Photo: Ryan Thomas with his father, Robin, in 1986.

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The ACLU/SC has asked the L.A. Police Department to explain its pepper-spray policy following an incident caught on video. In the video, an officer sprays a man who appears to be handcuffed and sitting in the back seat of a police car.

"In the wake of this alarming footage, the Department has not rushed to address justified public concern," stated a letter to the L.A. Police Commission. "The public is entitled to know what conduct the LAPD thinks is acceptable."

The spraying incident, which happened last year but came to light only this month, is one of several disturbing videos that have raised questions about L.A.'s commitment to police reform. Another video uploaded to the popular website YouTube.com showed an officer repeatedly punching a suspect in the face while another sat on his chest.

"The ACLU has long advocated for increased police accountability in order to enhance public safety," said ACLU/SC executive director Ramona Ripston in a statement. "The fact that this incident only came to light after being posted on a popular website dramatically illustrates how far we are from that ideal."