First Amendment

A New Jersey Judge Defies the First Amendment by Censoring News Coverage of a High School Lockdown

The judge contradicted Supreme Court precedents by ruling that a student's "privacy interests" trumped "the severe constitutional presumption" against prior restraints.

Jacob Sullum | 7.13.2026 4:10 PM

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On May 8, a 16-year-old student with an airsoft pistol in his waistband triggered a lockdown at New Brunswick High School in New Jersey. New Brunswick Today's coverage of the incident, which included posting leaked security camera footage on its YouTube page, triggered an even more extreme response: a court order requiring removal of the video and barring descriptions of it. Last week, New Jersey Superior Court Judge Thomas D. McCloskey modified that order, allowing reporting on the lockdown that does not reveal the student's identity. But at the same time, he extended the restrictions to cover every journalist in the United States.

Such prior restraints on freedom of the press are presumptively unconstitutional. McCloskey's injunction is "one of the worst censorship orders we've ever seen," says the Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF). "Forcing news outlets to delete or withhold information and to submit their work for government approval before they can publish is censorship, full stop," notes Caitlin Vogus, the FPF's senior adviser for advocacy. "The First Amendment could not be clearer: Prior restraints are almost never allowed. Neither judges nor the law can censor the press."

McCloskey's initial order, which he proposed on May 29 and issued on June 9 in response to an application from the New Brunswick Board of Education, required "immediate removal of confidential security/surveillance video taken at Plaintiff's New Brunswick High School." It also enjoined New Brunswick Today from "any and all future postings of confidential school security/surveillance video as taken at any of the schools in the Plaintiff's District." Even more remarkably, McCloskey prohibited the news outlet from "writing or posting about the content of the confidential video footage of the [16-year-old] juvenile/student specifically at issue in this matter."

New Brunswick Today asked McCloskey to rescind that order, noting the grave First Amendment concerns it raised. His revised order, issued on July 9, scaled back the prior restraints. McCloksey lifted the ban on describing the content of the May 8 video, "so long as the name(s) and identity(ies) of the 16-year old juvenile/student, and of
any and all other juvenile/students depicted in the video footage, is/are not revealed or identified in any way or manner whatsoever."

McCloskey also allowed New Brunswick Today to post the video itself but required that it first "modify the footage by redacting or blurring out the identities of all juvenile students depicted in it" and "present the modified footage to Plaintiff and its counsel for review and approval, with copy to the Court." He imposed those requirements even while conceding that "the video was already published and in the public domain," saying "the juvenile's identity and image remain sensitive."

Even as he narrowed the terms of his order,........

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