The University of California, Berkeley, has revised its Registered Student Organization in response to a lawsuit from Young Americans for Liberty, a libertarian student group which argued its First Amendment right to freedom of association had been violated.
As part of a settlement, UC Berkeley has agreed to make revisions to its policy that prohibit discrimination against student organizations based on their mission statements, purpose statements, uniqueness statements, and other viewpoints expressed in their application to become a registered student organization.
Moreover, the school agreed to pay $8,250 jointly to Young Americans for Liberty at UC Berkeley and Alliance Defending Freedom, which filed the lawsuit, as part of the settlement.
The lawsuit came after the YAL chapter on campus was denied recognition on account of seeming too similar to another pro-liberty student group on campus, the Mercury News reported in December.
“However, the administration has recognized multiple progressive student organizations with similar mission statements. As a result, the YAL chapter could not reserve spaces, invite speakers, or access the funds designated for student organizations that every student pays into,” a YAF press release on Monday stated.
The university has agreed to revise its policy to reflect an objective, viewpoint-neutral criterion for recognizing student organizations.
“Public university officials can’t discriminate against students because of their political beliefs,” said ADF legal counsel Caleb Dalton. “By leaving decisions on whether a student group is ‘too similar’ to another club in the hands of a university official with no requirement to follow any viewpoint-neutral standards, UC – Berkeley allowed for unconstitutional discrimination, but these changes fix that problem. Because these students stood up and challenged the status quo, the marketplace of ideas is freer at Berkeley today than it was last year.”
“As the birth place of the Free Speech Movement and a public university, UCB has done the right thing in agreeing to respect the First Amendment in this matter,” said YAL President Cliff Maloney Jr. “I applaud the students for standing up for their constitutionally protected freedoms and advocating for a level playing field.”
Janet Gilmore, a spokesperson for UC Berkeley told the Washington Examiner in a statement that the university is “satisfied with the outcome of a settlement that did not require a substantive change to any of the relevant campus policies.”
“The nominal monetary settlement is in recognition of the fact that the plaintiffs did receive one email that was insufficiently clear about standing practices regarding the recognition of Registered Student Organizations,” Gilmore added. “YAL and its members will now have full access to the same benefits of campus recognition enjoyed by the 1000+ student organizations on the Berkeley campus.”
This case is a part of YAL’s national “Fight for Free Speech” campaign that claims to have successfully secured the revision of 37 unconstitutional speech policies and restored First Amendment rights for 756,712 students.
