Title ABC/123 Version X 1 FIRAC Worksheet HIS/301 Version 8 3 University of Phoenix MaterialFIRAC Worksheet Appendix B: Briefing and Analyzing Cases in Constitutional Law offers a model to brief a court case. FIRAC stands for Facts, Issue, Rule(s), Analyze, and Conclusion. Read about this model and see an example of it in Appendix B. Then, select a United States Supreme Court case on the First Amendment and complete a FIRAC analysis using the worksheet below. For each portion of the FIRAC analysis, include a 200- to 300-word response. SUPREME COURT case: Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier FACTS: Lay out the facts of the case. Sometime during the school year of 1987, the principal of Hazelwood East Public School had made the decision to remove two articles from the school newspaper due to the fact that they contained controversial content. The newspaper, known as “The Spectrum”, was paid for by the Board of Education and it was produced by the journalism class at the school. The two articles that were found controversial contained topics such as teenage pregnancy and divorce. The article about divorce contained personal information from a student dealing with this dilemma in her personal life, and the articles about teenage pregnancy were featured stories with experiences from some of the students attending the school. The students interviewed for these articles had changed their names in order to protect their privacy. Although the students felt that these topics needed to be discussed amongst their peers, the principal removed them from the paper. Student Cathy Kuhlmeier, along with two other students in her class felt that these actions were a direct violation of their first amendment rights that grants them both access to the freedom of the press and also to the freedom of speech. In order to retaliate against these actions, Cathy and her two classmates decided to sue the school ("Facts and Case Summary: Hazelwood V. Kuhlmeier", n.d.). ISSUE: Identify the legal issue. The First Amendment states that Congress is not allowed to make any laws that prevents actions such as the removal or editing the freedoms of speech and the freedom of the press as well. When these students decided to sue the Hazelwood School District, they believed that the actions of their principal were unconstitutional in removing the two articles that were placed in the paper. The legal issue at question is “Does the decision of a principal to prohibit the publishing of certain articles, which he deems inappropriate, in the school newspaper violate the student journalists' First Amendment right of freedom of speech” ("Facts And Case Summary: Hazelwood V. Kuhlmeier", n.d.). There are two sides to think about when identifying the legality of these issues. On the one hand, you have the students who feel that the freedom of their voice and their newspaper is being threatened by the school’s authorities figure. On the other hand, you have the school authority that i ...