Chief Justice John Roberts was the lone dissent in a Supreme Court campus free speech case, arguing that a former college student had no standing to protest the school restricting his religious freedoms.
The case, in which a majority led by Justice Clarence Thomas, decided in favor of the student, concerned whether Chike Uzuegbunam, a former student at Georgia Gwinnett College, could seek nominal damages for an incident when the school prevented him from preaching in public. Thomas wrote that Uzuegbunam could because an “award of nominal damages by itself can redress a past injury.”
COLLEGE CAMPUS FREE SPEECH CASE UNITES RELIGIOUS AND ATHEIST GROUPS AT SUPREME COURT
Roberts pushed back, arguing that because Uzuegbunam was no longer a student and because the school changed its rules when he complained, the case was moot. Roberts warned that the court’s decision risked future situations where federal judges will be forced to weigh in on nonissues because the plaintiff seeks nominal damages.
“By insisting that judges be able to provide meaningful redress to litigants, Article III ensures that federal courts exercise their authority only ‘as a necessity in the determination of real, earnest and vital controversy between individuals,'” Roberts wrote, arguing that the Constitution attempts to restrict how judges can rule in such cases.
“The Court sees no problem with turning judges into advice columnists,” Roberts wrote of his colleagues. “In its view, the common law and (to a lesser extent) our cases require that federal courts open their doors to any plaintiff who asks for a dollar.”
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Roberts, in the past, has pushed against the court weighing in on issues that he does not regard as fitting for its judgment. Last summer, he was the swing vote in preventing the court from allowing Nevada and California churches to ignore state orders limiting their gathering sizes during the pandemic.
At the time, Roberts wrote in an opinion that he did not believe the court should be issuing emergency injunctions because the pandemic was an ongoing drama whose terms were always changing.
