The KSU officials further argue that only select individuals had access to
The Thorobred, and that “[a] designated public forum is not created when the government allows selective access for individual speakers rather than general access for a class of speakers.”
See Forbes, 523 U.S. at 679, 118 S.Ct. 1633. In an attempt to bring
The Thorobred under this rule, the officials point out that KSU limited access to the yearbook to the yearbook staff, which, in this case, was comprised of only Coffer. The officials note additionally that KSU's student handbook imposes certain minimum requirements—such as a minimum grade point average or successful completion of a journalism course-upon members of the yearbook's board of editors, and that there is no evidence that the student body as a whole may contribute to the yearbook. The KSU officials again misinterpret First Amendment forum law. There is a “distinction between ‘general access,’ which indicates that the property is a designated public forum, and ‘selective access,’ which indicates that the property is a nonpublic forum.”
Forbes, 523 U.S. at 679, 118 S.Ct. 1633 (citations omitted). General access is defined as the situation in which the government “makes its property generally available
to a certain class of speakers.”
Id. (emphasis added). Selective access occurs when the government “does no more than reserve eligibility for access to the forum to a particular class of speakers,
whose members must then, as individuals, ‘obtain permission’ to use it.”
Id. (emphasis added and citation omitted). In the instant case, KSU's policy and practice indicate that the university intended to designate the yearbook as a public forum for those students who became editors of the yearbook—in other words, the student editors composed the “class of speakers” for which the university designated the yearbook as a limited public forum. These editors were under no obligation to “obtain permission” each time they sought to access the yearbook—indeed, the policy and practice of the university was to give the student editors exclusive control over the content of
The Thorobred. Thus, the student editors had “general access” to the yearbook.
See Forbes, 523 U.S. at 679, 118 S.Ct. 1633. This is consistent with our finding that the yearbook constitutes a limited public forum for that particular class.