Maggie DeJong, fighting back hard and winning

Bring a gun to a knife fight: In April Maggie DeJong, a student at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE), sued [pdf] three of the college’s faculty members for attempting in 2022 to both punish her and well as silence her from her first amendment right to speak, simply because some other leftist students complained they did not like her opinions. As I wrote in April when I first reported this story:

These officials issued three “no contact” orders against DeJong, forbidding her to have any contact with three co-students in her program, simply because she had religious and political opinions they disagreed with and did not wish to hear. This orders essentially blacklisted her from the program, because of its small nature, and were literally a priori gag orders on her right to freely express her opinions. The officials also admitted that DeJong had violated no school policy, nor did they provide her any due process before issuing the orders. When challenged by DeJong’s lawyers, the university quickly realized the utter illegality of these orders, and cancelled them.

Unlike most recent cases of blacklisting, DeJong did not sue the university but the individuals involved, making them personally liable. Last week her lawyers at the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) announced that it had settled the case with those individuals in a manner that signaled a solid victory. The three defendants, Jamie Ball (director for Equal Opportunity, Access and Title IX Coordination), Randall Penbrook (school chancellor), and Megan Robb (her teacher) agreed to pay $80,000 and, most importantly, attend a class on the First Amendment, run by ADF lawyers.

In addition, these officials and the university agreed to revise the college’s policies and student handbook “to ensure students with varying political, religious, and ideological views” will all be treated equally in the art therapy program. In plain English, this means the language will no longer be couched in a way that only favors the Marxist and queer agenda, while simultaneously being very hostile to devout Christians, as illustrated by the guidelines recently issued by Pennyslvania’s Education Department.

This is a real victory for free speech and tolerance. These college officials had arbitrarily decided that only one point of view could be allowed, and decided they could punish anyone who said otherwise. They have now suffered personally for this illegal action. I guarantee they will not do it again.

Other college officials nationwide should take note. Take any illegal actions against the first amendment rights of any of your students and you will face legal action that is going to cost you. ADF is only one of many new non-profit legal firms standing ready and willing to defend the rights of conservatives whose constitutional rights have been violated.

We should expect a lot more victories like this in the coming years, considering the number of cases in the past three years where leftists in universities and state governments decided they were gods who could dictate what speech was allowed and forbidden. In American the fundamental law of the land still forbids such tyrannical actions, and DeJong’s victory here proves it.