Trump defends free speech

The Department of Justice filed a brief in federal court accusing Pierce College in California of violating its students' First Amendment rights.

At issue, the college stopping a student from distributing copies of the Constitution translated into Spanish.


From the Los Angeles Times:

Kevin Shaw was handing out Spanish-language copies of the U.S. Constitution to fellow students at Pierce College one afternoon last fall when an administrator approached him.

He told Shaw that he needed to move to the campus free speech zone. Before he did so, the administrator said, he would need a permit. If Shaw didn’t comply, he was told, he’d be asked to leave the Woodland Hills campus.

Shaw later discovered the tiny so-called free speech zone: 616 square feet — or the equivalent of about three parking spaces — on the college’s sprawling 426-acre campus. He also learned that, even in the zone, he was allowed to distribute literature only between 9 a.m. and 7:30 p.m. on weekdays.

This year, Shaw sued administrators, arguing that those policies severely restricted his free speech rights and violated the 1st Amendment.

Every newspaper in the country should blast that college's administrators and support Shaw.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced last month that his department will stand up to college administrators who violate student rights.

“Starting today, the Department of Justice will do its part in this struggle,” Sessions said last month. “We will enforce federal law, defend free speech and protect students’ free expression from whatever end of the political spectrum it may come.”

Shaw was doing homework Tuesday when a friend messaged him saying Sessions had mentioned him, by name, during the filing announcement.

He was stunned.

“I don’t know what helps and hurts in a court of law, but it feels good to know there’s support,” Shaw said. “It feels vindicating in some way to know that I’m not alone in the belief that this isn’t fair.”

Two weeks after his initial encounter with the campus administrator, Shaw spent several hours distributing materials, uninterrupted, outside the free speech area. Soon after, he said, a large protest against President Trump convened on campus, also outside the free speech area. Administrators stood by, he said, clapping and cheering.

“It just seems silly that we would silence some speech and allow others to go on uninhibited,” he said.

It is not silly.

It is totalitarian.

It is Marxist.

And under President Trump, it is ending. Maybe a federal judge in California will do us all a favor and uphold the administrators so the case can go to the Supreme Court -- where freedom will prevail.

From the Hill:

In its statement of interest, the DOJ contended that by requiring students to obtain permits to use the free speech zones, the school had created an "unconstitutional prior restraint."

"First, they create an unconstitutional prior restraint on speech in the Free Speech Area," the brief reads. "Second, in all events, they are not valid time, place, and manner restrictions because they are not narrowly tailored and do not leave open ample alternative channels of communication."

The filing on Tuesday marked the second time in less than a month that the DOJ has thrust itself into a lawsuit alleging that an institution of higher education has violated students' First Amendment rights by creating and mandating the use of free speech zones.

Late last month, the DOJ filed a statement of interest in a student's lawsuit against Georgia Gwinnett College. That suit alleges that the school violated the student's constitutional rights by allegedly barring him from passing out Christian literature on campus outside two designated free speech zones.

The government's filing in that case alleged that the college infringed on the student's First and 14th Amendment rights.

The issue of free speech on college campuses has garnered particular attention from Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who plunged himself into the debate last month in a speech at Georgetown University Law Center, in which he excoriated the notion of designated free speech zones.

“A national recommitment to free speech on campus and to ensuring First Amendment rights is long overdue,” he said.

The silence of the press in supporting this is stunning.

But not unexpected.

Ask me again why IDGAF anymore about defending a free press.

***

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