Anti-abortion students have forced the University of Maryland Baltimore County to loosen its guidelines on demonstrations after university officials pressured them multiple times to move their posters of bloody fetuses.
The students had reserved space for the student group Rock for Life to set up a display in April 2007 called the Genocide Awareness Project in a well-traveled area in front of the University Center.
But university officials, backed by police, told the students to move to a patio area, then to a field, where, the students alleged, few people could see their signs.
The students filed a lawsuit seeking unspecified damages in U.S. District Court in Baltimore City in April. According to the lawsuit, the students said the school was restricting their free speech only because the school did not agree with their message.
UMBC agreed to change parts of its speech policy at a preliminary hearing Friday, but refused to change its sexual harassment policy, which the students allege could further limit their right to free speech.
The university removed parts of a speech code that “protected emotional safety” and prohibited “intimidating” speech, and will allow people to protest on campus where they want.
“We feel it was a victory for the students,” said Steven Aden, a lawyer with the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian group that represented the students.
“A good bit of the language that we alleged was unconstitutional has now been removed from the policy. It gave breathing room for the First Amendment.”
The Genocide Awareness Project display featured photos 6 feet tall and 13 feet wide of aborted fetuses, butchered children in Rwanda, skinned whales and the burning World Trade Center buildings from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
The display is meant to equate abortion to other atrocities in the world “to show as many students as possible what abortion actually does to unborn children, and get them to think about abortion in a broader historical context,” according to the project’s Web site.
The school, however, did not agree to change its sexual harassment policy, which restricts speech that “intimidates” or “harasses.”
The students were seeking to have that policy changed because, they alleged, officials have too much leeway to decide what constitutes sexual harassment.
The Maryland Attorney General’s Office, which is representing UMBC, did not return calls for comment.
A trial could take place next spring, Aden said, adding that the students plan to stage another demonstration this year.
