The Alliance Defending Freedom announced their legal victory over an unconstitutional policy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst that restricted free speech on campus to less than one hour per day on less than 1 percent of the campus.
As part of a “preliminary settlement,” the university agreed to reverse its restrictive policy that severely limited “speeches and rallies,” which led the ADF to drop their lawsuit against the school.
“The only permission slip students need to speak on campus is the First Amendment. UMass-Amherst made the right move by eliminating this unconstitutional limit on student speech,” said ADF legal counsel Caleb Dalton in a press release issued Monday. “A public university is hardly the marketplace of ideas it’s supposed to be when less than one percent of campus is open for only one hour a day. We commend YAL [Young Americans for Liberty] and these brave students for taking a stand and causing UMass to remove this speech zone that never should have existed in the first place.”
According to the ADF, “The policy didn’t define ‘speech’ or ‘rally,’ instead leaving that decision up to the discretion of university officials and opening the door to unconstitutional discrimination based on a student group’s viewpoint. Giving a speech or holding a rally outside of the small speech zone — a space less than one percent of the campus — on the west side of the Student Union building and during hours other than between noon and 1 p.m. might have resulted in sanctions up to and including expulsion from the university.”
Young Americans for Liberty President Cliff Maloney Jr. said in a press release that “restricting free speech rights to one hour a day on less than 1 percent of the campus is unconstitutional, no questions asked.”
“I applaud the UMass Board for their decision and hope this change will spark a wave of policy reform on college campuses across the country,” Maloney said.
