Founded in 1890, the Cavalier Daily is well past legal age. But that doesn’t mean its readers are.
So goes the argument of two out of three federal appellate court judges, who recently reversed a 2008 injunction against Virginia Alcohol Beverage Control which prevented the state from banning ads for alcoholic beverages in college newspapers. The injunction stemmed from a similar challenge in 2006, in which both the Cavalier Daily and Virginia Tech’s Collegiate Times said that ABC’s restrictions would reduce the papers’ ad revenue. USA Today reports that each paper stands to lose roughly $30,000 in annual ad revenue.
In his dissent, Judge Norman K. Moon noted that not all readers are under the age of 21, and opined that "it is dangerous and unwise to sustain broad regulations for narrow reasons." The injunction against ABC previously restricted the beverage control organization’s to only those publications "distributed primarily to a high school or younger age level."
In 2006, C-VILLE covered the Cav Daily’s first challenge to ABC’s powers (and ran a few drink specials in the process—bottoms up!) What do you think of the ban on alcohol ads in college newspapers? Leave your thoughts below.
