The College Republicans of the University of California, Merced sent a letter to Chancellor Dorothy Leland earlier this week, threatening a lawsuit over an unconstitutional security fee levied on the club to host a speech by Ben Shapiro on April 12.
Despite the fact that the UC Merced College Republicans met multiple times with administrators to plan the event, the students were notified barely six weeks in advance of the $17,000 fee.
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Freedom X law firm, which has represented a number of conservative students and organizations in free speech cases, argues that the school’s security fee is a violation of the students’ constitutional rights to free speech and assembly.
Harry Duran, president of the UC Merced College Republicans, told Red Alert Politics, “Even though we are a campus organization/club, the administration claimed that they had nothing on the books that forces them to pay for our exorbitant security cost.”
According to Duran, the school has since reduced the security fee to $1,823, but Freedom X’s founder William Becker and the College Republicans have promised to fight until it is completely overturned.
Citing Forsyth County v. Nationalist Movement, Becker reinforces the fact that the Supreme Court has found it unconstitutional to levy a security fee on speaking.
“Individuals wishing to silence speech with which they disagree merely have to threaten to protest,” Becker stated in the demand letter. “This is an unacceptable result in a free society and is especially lamentable on a college or university campus. Controversial speech cannot be unduly burdened simply because it is controversial.”
“We can not possibly understand why such exorbitant fees must be necessary,” Becker added. “We reiterate that UCM cannot, consistent with its legal and moral obligation to uphold the First Amendment on campus, require student organizations to pay for security fees for an event on the basis of the event’s expressive content.”
The four-page letter laments that the university granted a “heckler’s veto” to“[i]ndividuals wishing to silence speech” instead of sticking up for students’ rights to controversial speech.
“Controversial speech cannot be unduly burdened simply because it is controversial,” Becker explained.
Peter Van Voorhis (@RepublicanPeter) is a conservative activist, commentator, and journalist who focuses on political issues affecting millennials.
