Pushback: Court rules against college’s attempt to censor students
One of the posters that Clovis Community College officials agreed to
“gladly” remove because it made some students “very uncomfortable.”
Bring a gun to a knife fight: A federal judge has issued a preliminary injunction against Clovis Community College in California, ruling that it violated the free speech rights of its students when college officials removed posters put up by students from the college’s Young Americans for Freedom chapter that condemned communism and socialism.
The lawsuit [pdf] was filed for the students by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE).
The college insists that it reserves the right to remove flyers over “inappropriate or [offensive] language or themes.” The lack of any definition for those vague terms would weigh heavily with the court in granting the preliminary injunction.
FIRE produced emails showing that a college administrator offered to “gladly take down” the flyers after “several people” said that they were “very uncomfortable” with the flyers, including a person who allegedly threatened a “harassment claim” if the posters were not taken down.
The poster above is one example. Nothing in it is false. In fact, it bluntly states the truth about every leftist movement in the past hundred years: each led to genocide and the mass murder of millions. I am thus not surprised the leftists at Clovis found these facts “very uncomfortable” to see, which is why they did what leftists always do, attempt to censor speech they did not like.
The lawsuit also provided evidence that the college administrators had issued conflicting rulings, giving the students permission in some cases and denying it in others — even though the content in all cases was essentially the same — suggesting that the reasoning was based on an effort to silence speech, not block “inappropriate or offensive language.”
The judge’s ruling [pdf] was quite blunt:
[T]he prohibition on “inappropriate or offense language or themes” does not have a core of readily identifiable, constitutionally proscribable speech. The Supreme Court has established that the government may not proscribe speech merely because it offends someone or because it contains an unpopular viewpoint. … Given this irrefutable principle, other courts have found university policies with similar language have no legitimate sweep of constitutionally proscribable speech.
In other words, free speech trumps hurt feelings, and college officials should have known this. Their job is not to make students feel “safe,” but to teach them to handle and consider many opposing viewpoints, even ones they don’t like.
The lawsuit shall now move forward. Interestingly, it does not name the college as a defendant. Instead it is against the actual college officials involved, President Lori Bennett, Vice President of Student Services Marco De La Garza, Dean of Student Services Gurdeep Sihota Hebert, and Senior Student Services Program Specialist Patrick Stumpf. All are liable for both monetary and punitive damages for their actions.
May they be made to pay, and pay big, for their willingness to nullify the Bill of Rights and some of the most basic principles of American freedom.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
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One of the posters that Clovis Community College officials agreed to
“gladly” remove because it made some students “very uncomfortable.”
Bring a gun to a knife fight: A federal judge has issued a preliminary injunction against Clovis Community College in California, ruling that it violated the free speech rights of its students when college officials removed posters put up by students from the college’s Young Americans for Freedom chapter that condemned communism and socialism.
The lawsuit [pdf] was filed for the students by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE).
The college insists that it reserves the right to remove flyers over “inappropriate or [offensive] language or themes.” The lack of any definition for those vague terms would weigh heavily with the court in granting the preliminary injunction.
FIRE produced emails showing that a college administrator offered to “gladly take down” the flyers after “several people” said that they were “very uncomfortable” with the flyers, including a person who allegedly threatened a “harassment claim” if the posters were not taken down.
The poster above is one example. Nothing in it is false. In fact, it bluntly states the truth about every leftist movement in the past hundred years: each led to genocide and the mass murder of millions. I am thus not surprised the leftists at Clovis found these facts “very uncomfortable” to see, which is why they did what leftists always do, attempt to censor speech they did not like.
The lawsuit also provided evidence that the college administrators had issued conflicting rulings, giving the students permission in some cases and denying it in others — even though the content in all cases was essentially the same — suggesting that the reasoning was based on an effort to silence speech, not block “inappropriate or offensive language.”
The judge’s ruling [pdf] was quite blunt:
[T]he prohibition on “inappropriate or offense language or themes” does not have a core of readily identifiable, constitutionally proscribable speech. The Supreme Court has established that the government may not proscribe speech merely because it offends someone or because it contains an unpopular viewpoint. … Given this irrefutable principle, other courts have found university policies with similar language have no legitimate sweep of constitutionally proscribable speech.
In other words, free speech trumps hurt feelings, and college officials should have known this. Their job is not to make students feel “safe,” but to teach them to handle and consider many opposing viewpoints, even ones they don’t like.
The lawsuit shall now move forward. Interestingly, it does not name the college as a defendant. Instead it is against the actual college officials involved, President Lori Bennett, Vice President of Student Services Marco De La Garza, Dean of Student Services Gurdeep Sihota Hebert, and Senior Student Services Program Specialist Patrick Stumpf. All are liable for both monetary and punitive damages for their actions.
May they be made to pay, and pay big, for their willingness to nullify the Bill of Rights and some of the most basic principles of American freedom.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
A Reason for Giving THANKS………….
New for Clovis Community College – the numbers on the flyer are under counts
Chris,
I agree with you on the counts, they do look low. The ones for the Soviet Union are very low, along with the numbers for Cambodia and North Korea.
The numbers for China, I agree with. With all of Mao’s wacky five year plans that plunged the country into starvation many times so they could make “The Great Leap Forward”, and let us not forget the Cultural Revolution.
The poster’s figures don’t account for the many, many people who took a look at the ocean, and decided that, huh, the open sea in an overcrowded small boat is preferably to life here on land. A lot of them didn’t, and still don’t, make it. I’ve wondered how bad life would have to be where that would seem a rational decision.
Related, its all related:
TRUTH REALLY IS STRANGER THAN FICTION
Two days ago, I sent my very good friend, who happens to be a very nice and caring gay woman some information on something that is interesting me, the recent FTX crypto meltdown. And that conversation was somehow turned into a conversation on the subject of the recent shooting at the gay night club, Club Q, in Colorado.
And the conversation resolved in this sentence which I was not happy with, and it personally offended me. And as a general rule I am unoffendable, you can not offend me, especially when talking about politics and the like.
“What are your people afraid of that they’re killing folks?”
Now that is one damning all-encompassing in one big dirty filthy political basket inaccurate and biased statement.
*Your* people being in my case a more rational and strong middle Right more Conservative individual. I understand and tolerate some of the “Progressive” argument BUT I reject the magical “Progressive” BS Harry Potter thinking and agenda as a general rule. And if you have ever read anything that I have ever written you clearly understand that as being a fact.
The vast majority of the rational population in our country, the people who go to work every day and pay for everything, vote, and make the country run are either middle Left (D) or middle Right (R). That is where they and their families live and exist and not on the extremes of either side of the political divide where irrational crazy and mentally ill violence and political manipulators lives and thrives.
In my response to her I told her that she knew better than to group me in such company with anyone who would do such a violent and mentally ill thing. I also stated that even before she offered it that I forgave her for her irrational and emotional reaction. And that is exactly what happened, she apologized immediately. Teach mutual respect and not hatred and retribution, that is my conclusion and that is how I live my life.
Which does not mean that you are tolerant of another’s point of view to the point of self-destruction or to the point of suicide, there are hard rational lines to be drawn.
(I added: It is never a good idea to write about something emotional that you feel so passionately about at 1:30 in the morning and press the send button. Which looking at the time stamp I realized is exactly what she did. We are good.)
And this morning looking through the news what do I find? The shooter had in 2016 legally changed his name.
“In a court filing, (The shooter) Aldrich’s public defenders said that their client is non-binary and uses they/them pronouns, referring to the client as ‘Mx. Anderson Aldrich.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11459941/Colorado-shooting-suspect-Anderson-Aldrichs-estranged-dad-ex-MMA-turned-porn-star.html
The young man and his self-hating violent actions apparently are directly related to his parents and the confusion and mental abuse that they brought to the table?
We are all good, bad or otherwise the *victims* of our parents. And parents try to do the best job that they can for the most part.
But in the end, we are all on our own and must come to face that fact and figure things out, and some people fail at that task miserably unfortunately.
Like I said, Truth Really Is Stranger Than Fiction. You just cannot make this stuff up.
Dang, those friggin Amish youts surely have some odd names!! Maybe iton ‘s not them this time!!
I do hope that THIS case becomes the PRECEDENT for all the abuses inflicted by the LEFT on FREE SPEECH!!
Make the PEOPLE personally responsible and let THEM pay the way that the LEFT does NOT like – OUT OF THEIR OWN POCKETS!!
Strategically this may be the correct method of teaching a lesson.
1) Sue the actors in their personal capacities. Discovery and trial will not disclose that there was a policy which delegated this sort of power to the defendants.
2) Sue the college and trustees to prevent the college from covering the legal costs of the individual defendants.
If the college as a matter of law, could not institute unconstitutional policies then it could not have delegated any such power to the individuals, who were clearly acting outside their proper powers, but clothed with the appearance of authority. The college should not cover their actions.
Show the “‘Lady”:
Virginia Walmart Shooter……..
And The Q Bar Killer…..
https://www.fox5dc.com/news/virginia-walmart-shooting-31-year-old-employee-andre-bing-accused-of-killing-6-people-himself
https://www.foxnews.com/us/colorado-club-q-shooting-suspect-anderson-lee-aldrich-non-binary-public-defenders-say
They Were Trump Republicans OfCourse….