Student journalists at the University of Illinois are suing their university for violating their constitutional rights to free press, free speech, and due process. The students allege the university filed restraining orders against them when they started reporting on an anti-Trump rally on campus.
“During the rally, Black Rose spokesman and university instructor, Tariq Khan, assaulted Joel Valdez and also went after student Blair Nelson who was video-recording the event. Co-plaintiff Andrew Minik, who was not at the event, reported on the incident for Campus Reform, a college news organization,” according to a press release from the students’ legal counsel, Mauck & Baker in Chicago. The release goes on to explain that all three students were issued restraining orders from the University of Illinois, despite the fact that Minik was not even present at the rally.
The students allege that Khan used the restraining orders “as a sword to go after” them “by reporting them for allegedly violating the orders whenever he or his wife was in the same place with one of them on campus.”
“I hope the university does the right thing. No student should go through this just for covering the news,” Minik told Red Alert Politics.
[Also read: Where’s the media love for the pro-Second Amendment student walkout?]
The lawsuit was filed in the Central District Court of Illinois and the plaintiffs are seeking civil damages for Khan’s assault and destruction of Valdez’s cell phone.
