In November 2021, at taxpayer-funded Clovis Community College, the group Young Americans for Freedom requested permission to post flyers. College officials assented.
The flyers attacked socialism. Uh oh. This was a grave violation of the alleged inalienable right of socialist students on the campus to never be exposed to disagreement with their views.
Some of the aggrieved students complained. We are offended, they told the school.
Administrators furrowed their brows and quickly determined that the school could not permit such offensive speech.
Suddenly censored, the YAF students who had posted the flyers went to court, represented by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). They quickly won a district court victory that has now been affirmed in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
According to the court’s ruling, “The district court did not abuse its discretion when it concluded that [the students] were likely to succeed on the merits of their claim that the ‘inappropriate or offens[ive] language or themes’ provision was facially overbroad.”
This means that the case can continue.
Clovis YAF Chair Juliette Colunga hopes that in response to the ruling, Clovis will finally decide “to explicitly protect the constitutional rights of its students to speak freely.”
The school has tried to forestall further litigation to require it to set forth an unambiguous policy protecting freedom of speech by conceding that the students may post the anti-socialist flyers.
That’s not enough for FIRE, though, which is proceeding with the litigation.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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2 replies on “Students Strike Back”
They should also file a civil suit, because their having to contest the authorities at the college undoubtedly damaged their prospects at that college, affecting grades, standings, and future recommendations and grievously harming them financially.
Taxpayer funding should not be going to institutions that overtly or tacitly undermine the Constitution.
We’ve seen that punishments are very limited for members of university staff who engage in such behavior.
I suggest that, in the cases of state-run schools, legislatures require contracts that strip faculty and staff not only of their present positions but of otherwise accrued retirement benefits whenever courts find that the actions of these employees have violated the constitutional rights of some party.