Group’s claim of UC bias falls short

Judge indicates Berkeley GOP suit can be revived

A UC Berkeley Republican group that sued the university over restrictions on a planned speech in April by conservative commentator Ann Coulter has failed — at least for now — to point to any facts showing discrimination by campus officials, a federal judge said Friday.

While U.S. District Judge Maxine Chesney said she planned to dismiss the suit by the Berkeley College Republicans against the university and its leaders, she said they could refile the suit within 30 days if they presented plausible assertions that UC officials were ideologically biased or imposed unnecessary restrictions on Coulter and like-minded speakers. A lawyer for the group said the task won’t be difficult.

UC Berkeley’s failure to accommodate Coulter and other conservative speakers in recent months, and its closure of half the seats in Zellerbach Hall before a speech by author and talkshow host Ben Shapiro two weeks ago, show “animus in the university with regard to conservative positions,” attorney Harmeet Dhillon told reporters after the 90-minute hearing in San

Francisco.

Coulter, invited to speak by the College Republicans, canceled her appearance and said the university had refused to make a campus building available. University officials said they never got a request from the campus group, had no safe sites available on short notice and were turned down by Coulter when they proposed later dates for her appearance.

Other conservative groups have promoted appearances by far-right speakers on the left-leaning campus and blamed the university for their cancellation. A four-day “free speech” event, scheduled to start last Sunday, dwindled to a brief campus appearance Sunday by Milo Yiannopoulos, who spoke to a handful of supporters amid tight police security.

At Friday’s hearing, Dhillon said the events reflect a long-standing policy at UC Berkeley to impose restrictions on “speakers they don’t like.” She said the university’s new guidelines for sites and security at speeches on campus, issued after the suit was filed, amounted to “a couple of tweaks to make (the policy) look more attractive to the court and to the media.”

Bryan Heckenlively, a lawyer for the university, said the policy provides neutral standards for reserving indoor forums for speakers, based on reasonable forecasts of the need for security.

Chesney said the claims of bias would have to address the fact that UC Berkeley offered the controversial Yiannopoulos a “great venue and time” for a speech that was scheduled in February but never took place because of violent clashes.

At this point, the judge said, the College Republicans have not alleged any facts that would show that UC Berkeley imposed restrictions on Coulter and other conservatives because “they disagreed with the speakers,” or that the university had other sites available. But she said the case wasn’t over, and Dhillon said considerable evidence has come to light of one-sided policies and practices.

Dan Mogulof, a spokesman for the university, said that although the case is not over yet, “we welcome the court’s ruling that the campus is complying with its First Amendment obligations.”