Last week, an Illinois court ruled (pdf) for the first time enforcing Illinois’ law protecting college newspapers (a law passed in the wake of a 7th Circuit ruling against freedom of the student press). The court ruled that former faculty advisor Gerian Steven Moore, who had been fired from his post, must be reinstated.

As former editor George Providence II noted in an article in Illinois Academe back in 2009, the administration went to extraordinary lengths to try to silence freedom of the press. Although the court ruled against Providence’s efforts to prohibit prior review (on a technicality, that the individuals sued had left Chicago State), there is no doubt that freedom of the press at public colleges in Illinois is much stronger now.