The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression filed the lawsuit Thursday on behalf of three students at Clovis Community College in Fresno, California, after school administrators, including college President Lori Bennett, prohibited the students and their club, the Young Americans for Freedom , from posting several flyers with anti-communist and anti-abortion messages.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, accuses Clovis Community College of violating the First Amendment rights of Alejandro Flores, Daniel Flores, and Juliette Colunga, three members of the Young Americans for Freedom at Clovis Community College, by banning the flyers.
The college’s hostility to the flyers began in November 2021, the lawsuit says, when the three students initially received permission to post three flyers with anti-communist messages in the college’s academic buildings. But within days, Bennett ordered college staff to remove the posters, claiming that they made “several people uncomfortable” and that if the administrators needed an excuse for their actions, they should tell the students that “they aren’t club announcements.”
The lawsuit says the college does not require posted flyers to be official club announcements and the requirement was only implemented for the conservative group’s flyers.
“Clovis tried to put up barriers against our ideas because administrators didn’t like them,” Alejandro Flores said in a FIRE press release. “But that’s the opposite of what a college should do. Our college should encourage us to discuss and sharpen our ideas, not shut down the conversation.”
In December, the college blocked the club from putting up a series of flyers expressing opposition to abortion on the day the U.S. Supreme Court was slated to hear oral arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a case that eventually led to the overturn of Roe v. Wade and ended constitutional protections for abortion.
The club’s flyers were eventually approved but were only allowed to be posted on a “free speech kiosk” the lawsuit says was “at the edge of a walkway students virtually never use because it does not lead to any building entrances or parking lots.”
“By relegating the flyers to a tiny kiosk, Clovis administrators tried to ensure that YAF’s opinions would never reach the rest of campus,” Jeff Zeman, an attorney for FIRE, said. “But FIRE’s here to amplify the voices that censors try to silence and make sure that all Clovis students are heard.”
Young America’s Foundation president and former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker said the incident was “another disappointing example” of attacks on freedom of speech on college campuses.
“By attempting to stifle the speech of the conservative students in our Young Americans for Freedom chapter, Clovis administrators engaged in unlawful censorship in violation of the First Amendment,” he said.
Clovis Community College did not respond to a request for comment.
* Article from: The Washington Examiner
