New Jersey newspaper ordered to unpublish video, put under gag order

New Brunswick Today was ordered by a New Jersey state court to remove footage from its website and YouTube on May 29, 2026, following a complaint by the New Brunswick Board of Education.

According to court filings reviewed by the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, the footage obtained by the newspaper and published May 28 was taken by surveillance cameras at New Brunswick High School, and showed a student entering the building and triggering the alarm on a metal detector. The student was searched by security and was found to be carrying a concealed weapon.

“The district has reason to believe that the footage was recorded from a computer by an individual with access to the district’s surveillance system and disseminated without authorization,” Aubrey Johnson, superintendent of the school district, wrote in an affidavit.

Johnson argued that the release of the footage could violate student privacy rights and reveal security-related information about the school facilities.

The day the footage was published, an attorney for the board of education emailed the news outlet’s founder and editor, Charlie Kratovil, demanding that he immediately remove the video, lest the matter be brought before a judge. The attorney also asked Kratovil to disclose how he obtained the footage.

Kratovil refused.

A case was filed with the Superior Court for Middlesex County the following day, asking for the removal of the footage and to restrain the newspaper “from any and all future postings of confidential school security/surveillance video” from schools in the district.

Superior Court Judge Thomas McCloskey temporarily granted the district’s requests during an emergency hearing May 29, additionally stipulating from the bench that even publishing descriptions of what was seen in the video would violate his order.

Attorneys representing New Brunswick Today filed a request June 5 to appeal the order and have the restraints lifted, but the state’s Appellate Division denied their request, stating that they had not filed a motion to dissolve the restraints with the lower court. The paper’s attorneys filed such a request with the Superior Court on June 10.

“The United States Supreme Court has repeatedly made it clear that prior restraints are the least tolerable infringement on First Amendment rights,” they wrote. “Ordering content to be removed from the internet and enjoining future publications are unequivocally prior restraints that must be analyzed under the prior restraint doctrine, which this Court ignored.”

The parties are not scheduled to appear until July 7 to argue whether the court should order permanent restraints on the newspaper and whether the temporary restraints should be dissolved.

But in a June 11 letter to the judge, the newspaper’s attorney Bruce Rosen asked that the hearing be moved to June 15. He argued that the delay violated the judge’s own order stipulating that the motion could be heard within three business days, as well as the Appellate Division’s decision, which requires that it be heard “expeditiously.”