A student at Blinn College in Brenham, Texas, filed suit against the school following an encounter with administrators that prohibited her from displaying a pro-2nd Amendment sign in front of the student center.
Nicole Sanders, a Blinn sophomore, filed the suit in conjunction with the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). FIRE, which has prevailed in other, similar free-speech campus cases, describes its mission as to “defend and sustain individual rights at America’s colleges and universities. These rights include freedom of speech, legal equality, due process, religious liberty, and sanctity of conscience — the essential qualities of individual liberty and dignity.”
In February, Sanders and other members of the conservative Young Americans for Liberty club solicited new membership with a display outside the Blinn College student center. The display included a sign that stated “defend your gun rights on campus” and another sign that read LOL — with President Obama’s famous campaign logo replacing the “O.”
The school already has a designated “free-speech zone” — an absurdity that’s come under criticism from FIRE and other constitutional advocates at colleges nationwide. Nevertheless, that’s where Sanders and the other Young Americans for Liberty were doing their soliciting.
In other words, Sanders’ group was playing by Blinn’s rules.
That didn’t stop school administrators from approaching Sanders and informing her that the 2nd Amendment sign was forbidden. From a Campus Reform article in February:
“Gun rights on campus?” Sherri Rich, a Student Leadership & Activities (SLA) assistant, told Sanders in a video obtained by Campus Reform. “Hey, I’m not against guns, okay? But on campus, I’m not so sure.”
Although Sanders was in the school’s designated free speech zone, Rich told the student and her friend that they would be prohibited from continuing their efforts to sign other students up unless they got permission.
Rich did not approach Sanders until she had finished talking with students outside and was relaxing inside the student center with her friend. Campus police accompanied Rich when she talked with Sanders.
“We just don’t allow it,” Rich said, unable to cite a school policy that would prohibit Sanders’s action. “You have to come and get special permission.”
Here’s the accompanying video:
The federal lawsuit Sanders and FIRE filed last week “challenges Blinn’s policy of restricting speech to a tiny ‘Free Speech Area,’ as well as the process that led the college to take over a month to approve a palm card she wanted to hand out to students explaining their Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights,” FIRE said in a press statement. “The suit also alleges that one of Sanders’s professors threatened her with retaliation, telling her he would ‘protect me and mine’ if she sought to take action against the school.”
FIRE has a track record of resolving these types of cases in favor of students’ constitutional rights. You may recall the case of Robert Van Tuinen, a Modesto Junior College (MJC) student who was prohibited from handing out copies of the U.S. Constitution across campus — on Constitution Day, no less. FIRE helped Van Tuinen file a federal lawsuit against the school. MJC settled in February of last year, agreeing to revise its speech policies and awarding Van Tuinen $50,000.
The post Another college free-speech zone obstructs students’ 1st Amendment rights appeared first on Personal Liberty.
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