Florida college briefly bans printing of student magazine over LGBTQ+ content

A student arts and culture magazine was told by Florida’s Pensacola State College on April 29, 2026, that the school would not pay to print the publication because it included articles with LGBTQ+ content. The college later reversed itself after an outcry from students and the advocacy group Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

Just-Opposed is a collaborative project between Pensacola State College journalism and graphic design students, editor and writer Quincy Kirn told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker. The magazine, produced during the spring semester, was intended to raise the profile of underrepresented local events and businesses. It included Kirn’s profile of a local drag performer; a feature on a queer, radical mobile bookstore; and coverage of a local poetry group.

In a May 1 letter to the college’s president, FIRE wrote that academic affairs official Brenda Kelly told the project’s faculty adviser that the three articles violated a 2022 Florida law known as the Stop WOKE Act. Several groups had challenged the law as unconstitutional, and a federal judge blocked the state from enforcing it in higher education in November 2022.

FIRE said Kelly had cited two provisions of the law: one forbidding public colleges and universities from funding advocacy “for diversity, equity and inclusion,” and another prohibiting “instruction” on eight “concepts” related to race, color, national origin or sex.

It called the college’s actions “a textbook example of prior restraint” and a violation of the First Amendment.

Kirn told the Tracker that the school asked student journalists to remove the content it deemed in violation of the law. “They said that we could either remove the LGBTQ content or it just wouldn’t get printed. And so a lot of the journalists started to stand in solidarity with each other, saying, ‘Well, we don’t want our stories published if you’re going to censor us.’”

Kelly, in a May 4 response to FIRE, stated that the printing of the magazine was “optional, not required,” and that the “students completed the project as assigned.” In response, FIRE noted that the “viewpoint-based denial of publication funding continues to violate the students’ First Amendment rights.”

College President C. Edward Meadows, in a May 18 letter to FIRE, said that after the school reviewed expenditures prohibited under Florida law, it determined that printing copies of the magazine for students’ personal portfolios was permissible. However, he said that “no requests were made to the College administration to publish the magazine and make it publicly available.”

The college spent less than $800 to print 100 copies of Just-Opposed, and will give two copies to students involved in the project, the Pensacola News Journal reported.

Kirn — who is also the incoming editor-in-chief of The Corsair, the college’s student-run newspaper — told the Tracker that the students weren’t able to review the version that went to print, and it contained multiple errors, spelling Kirn’s name wrong and omitting work by graphic design students.

“So we decided to rework the magazine, fix all the flaws, and we added a couple more pages. We raised $2,000,” Kirn said, referring to the GoFundMe set up to independently print the magazine.

The students are planning a release party for Just-Opposed in July, featuring businesses showcased in the articles, as well as a performance by the drag performer profiled by Kirn. They hope to hand out 500 free copies of the magazine.

Kirn said she was “disappointed” with the way the school handled the situation. She added that initially she was concerned that the college would try to censor The Corsair as well. But in the wake of the pushback by FIRE and the coverage of the controversy, “I don’t think that they’ll be trying to censor us anytime soon, which is the good outcome of all of this.”

Pensacola State College did not respond to a request for comment.