Young America’s Foundation and the Berkeley College Republicans have joined together to file a lawsuit against the University of California, Berkeley. The lawsuit comes after numerous accounts of UC Berkeley administrators purposefully barricading conservative thought from campus.
On April 24, the two groups filed a lawsuit which asserts the university has illegitimately prohibited conservative speakers from voicing their opinions on campus time and time again. Notable speakers who were prohibited from speaking for one reason or another include Milo Yiannopoulos, David Horowitz, and Ann Coulter.
The suit reads, “discriminatory imposition of curfew and venue restrictions has resulted in the cancellation of two speaking engagements featuring prominent conservative speakers in the month of April, 2017.”
The document goes on to state that UC Berkeley gave somewhat of a withdrawal from its initial retraction of Coulter’s speech, instead rescheduling it to the week of May 2nd, 2017. The rescheduled week, however, is known as “dead week.” Dead week is a week where there are no classes, and a large portion of the student body spends their time studying for upcoming exams.
UC Berkeley is attempting to discredit the allegations and have the case dismissed. According to a court document obtained by Campus Reform, the allegations against the university are “moot”.
The document reads, “in any event the school was within its rights to shut down Coulter’s speech because it didn’t do so explicitly on the basis of her political viewpoints.”
The school system’s attorneys also attempt to justify the college blocking conservative speakers by saying they were “viewpoint neutral.”
“The alleged restrictions were viewpoint neutral because they were not motivated by disagreement with the speaker’s viewpoint,” the attorneys assert, adding that the restrictions were also “constitutional ‘time, place, and, manner regulations’ because they were content neutral, narrowly tailored to serve the significant government interests in safety, education, and distribution of university resources, and left open ample alternative channels of communication.”
YAF spokesman Spencer Brown voiced his concern with the college’s attempt to absolve themselves of the multiple allegations placed against them. As Brown states, “This weak attempt by the University of California, Berkeley to brush off their egregious free speech violations is staggering but unfortunately unsurprising given their demonstrated pattern of suppressing the First Amendment rights of conservatives on campus.”
The institution has come a long way from being the “birthplace of free speech.” Student groups have every right to have their voices heard and the college should be demonized for intentionally blocking speakers from campus.
