Lawsuits highlight a hostility to free speech

THAT many U.S. college campuses are hostile to free speech is well known, and in most cases it appears administrators crack down on politically conservative speech but not politically liberal speech. Two lawsuits filed against Kennesaw State University, a public university in Georgia, show this perception is grounded in fact.

Kennesaw administrators’ application of the school’s “speech zone” and “security fee” polices has prompted lawsuits from students who argue the school has infringed upon their free speech rights.

Student group Ratio Christi sought to conduct “a pro-life display on campus in 2016 and 2017 to prompt dialogue with students and faculty on the issue of abortion.” The group wanted to host a display near the student center, but administrators deemed it “controversial” and relegated Ratio Christi to a more isolated spot described as “not paved” and “quite muddy.” In 2017, Ratio Christi members noted the more centralized spot they originally requested “sat empty and unused the entire time” their display was up.

The group’s lawsuit argues Kennesaw’s speech zone policies give administrators “unbridled discretion,” leading to similar groups receiving vastly different treatment based on the content of the speech being conveyed. For example, in October 2017, Kennesaw officials permitted the Kennesaw Pride Alliance, a gay rights group, to reserve all seven speech zones for an event.

The lawsuit notes the university’s speech zone policies “contain no guidelines, standards, or criteria limiting the discretion of KSU officials” in determining where student groups can hold an event.

Similarly, there are no standards “limiting the discretion of KSU officials in determining how an event space request is processed or who is involved in reviewing that request.” Nor are there any deadlines for the school’s review process.

Young Americans for Freedom has filed a similar lawsuit. Kennesaw’s policies rank student groups into four tiers, and higher-ranking student groups are given “greater access to campus resources, higher priority in making reservations on campus, and greater access to student activity fee funding.” Administrators have “unbridled discretion” as to how they classify student groups “because the policy uses a variety of inherently subjective factors and provides no guidance as to how those factors should be weighed.”

The lawsuit notes many of the factors Kennesaw officials use to evaluate student groups “are inherently viewpoint- or content-based.”

YAF was assigned to the school’s lowest tier. And when it sought to host a speech by Katie Pavlich, a columnist who espouses standard conservative views on free markets and limited government, the school imposed a $320 security fee on the students. The policy guiding imposition of such fees again involves “no objective and comprehensive guidelines, standards, or criteria.” When a Black Lives Matter protest was conducted, Kennesaw administrators imposed no security fee.

College administrators often appear baffled anyone would suggest they discriminate. As the Kennesaw lawsuits demonstrate, the reason people think college administrators are abusive and intolerant of free speech … is because there are so many cases where administrators are exactly that.