GOP students sue over Coulter.
Lawsuit filed against UC Berkeley accuses the school of violating Coulter’s free speech rights
BERKELEY — The furor over whether conservative pundit Ann Coulter will get a chance to speak at UC Berkeley this week continued to grow on Monday, with a conservative student group suing the university and Coulter suggesting she may show up Thursday even if she’s not offered a venue to speak.
With the First Amendment clash drawing national attention, Coulter tweeted on Monday, “Nice day for an outdoor speech at Berkeley,” accompanied by four days of weather forecasts, Tuesday through Friday.
The university continues to maintain that it never agreed to provide a speaking venue to Coulter for this Thursday, cannot guarantee her security on that day, and has offered an alternative date — May 2 — for her to speak.
At a news conference Monday at the San Francisco office of Dhillon Law Group Inc., Harmeet Dhillon, attorney for Berkeley College Republicans and Tennessee-based Young America’s Foundation, said UC Berkeley “abruptly canceled” Coulter’s scheduled speech for this Thursday “after weeks of discussion” and “a lot of back and forth.” But UC Berkeley spokesman Dan Mogulof said later on Monday that “the event was never canceled, because it was never scheduled, because we were unable to identify a venue.” All suitable venues had previously been booked, he said.
In a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco on Monday against UC Berkeley officials and University of California President Janet Napolitano, Dhillon seeks a judicial
declaration that the university has violated her clients’ Constitutional rights under the First and Fourteenth amendments by “selectively enforcing the High-Profile Speaker Policy against (Berkeley College Republicans) and (Young America’s Foundation), which unreasonably restricts the time, place and manner of political speech.” The complaint also seeks an injunction against the application of any policies that restrict political expression on the UC Berkeley campus, as well as the awarding of attorneys’ fees and court costs.
At the news conference, Dhillon reiterated and expounded on many of the allegations in the suit and in letters she wrote to the university on Friday.
She accused the university of having come up with the high-profile speaker policy “recently and secretly” and using it to silence two of her clients’ speakers — Coulter and, earlier this month, conservative writer David Horowitz — while allowing a former Clinton administration official and former Mexican President Vicente Fox, a critic of President Donald Trump, to speak.
She also accused UC Berkeley police of “standing down” during violent protests against a scheduled Feb. 1 appearance by former Breitbart News editor Milo Yiannopoulos that was canceled shortly before it was supposed to start, after a group of masked protesters smashed windows at the student union building and set fires outside. She cited the Yiannopoulos cancellation as an example of the exercise of the “heckler’s veto,” a legal doctrine in which the government prevents a public speech or event on threats of interruptions, protests or violence.
The university is feeling increasing pressure from both the left and right to respect and defend Coulter’s free speech rights, with both liberal Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, and liberal comedian Bill Maher speaking out in recent days. In an interview on Fox News on Saturday, Coulter said she was still optimistic she would be allowed to speak Thursday.
“I don’t think it should be that hard to arrange, I’ve done it hundreds of times, gone to college campuses ...” she said.
Dianne Klein, the University of California’s associate vice president for strategic communications and media relations, said in a statement Monday that “the university welcomes speakers of all political viewpoints and is committed to providing a forum to enable Ann Coulter to speak on the Berkeley campus.”
“The allegation ... that Ms. Coulter is being prohibited from speaking because of her conservative views is untrue,” Klein said, adding that the university is working to find a mutually agreeable time for Coulter to appear, while ensuring Coulter’s and the university and larger community’s safety.
At a news conference last week, UC Berkeley police Capt. Alex Yao said “very specific and credible threats of violence” had been received in connection with the announced Coulter event for Thursday.
Dhillon has said the alternate, two-hour, afternoon time window on May 2 that the university had offered is unacceptable because, among other reasons, students will not be in class that day and will be studying for finals.
“The university welcomes speakers of all political viewpoints and is committed to providing a forum to enable Ann Coulter to speak on the Berkeley campus. The allegation ... that Ms. Coulter is being prohibited from speaking because of her conservative views is untrue.” — Dianne Klein, associate vice president, University of California