On March 4, 2015, students William Jergins, Joey Gillespie, and Forrest Gee filed a federal lawsuit against Dixie State for restricting their free speech rights when the school refused to approve flyers promoting their Young Americans for Liberty (YAL) student group.
Dixie State University in Utah and California State Polytechnic University, Pomona have both agreed this week to suspend numerous policies that substantially restrict students’ free speech rights on campus. The policy suspensions result from lawsuits filed this year as part of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education’s (FIRE’s) Stand Up For Speech Litigation Project, an unprecedented and undefeated national effort to eliminate unconstitutional speech codes from the nation’s public colleges and universities.
“FIRE has been warning colleges for years that the Constitution is clear—there is no place for speech codes on a public college campus,” said FIRE President and CEO Greg Lukianoff. “When colleges and universities fail to meet their legal obligation to protect their students’ and faculty’s free speech rights, FIRE and Stand Up For Speech will be there to hold them accountable. We are encouraged by the developments at Dixie State and Cal Poly Pomona and are confident that the speech codes we’ve challenged will soon be permanently eliminated at both schools.”
On March 4, 2015, students William Jergins, Joey Gillespie, and Forrest Gee filed a federal lawsuit against Dixie State for restricting their free speech rights when the school refused to approve flyers promoting their Young Americans for Liberty (YAL) student group. Administrators claimed the flyers depicting President George W. Bush, President Barack Obama, and Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara violated university policy because they “disparage[d]” and “mock[ed]” individuals. An administrator also decreed that the group had to hold its “free speech wall” event in an inconveniently located “free speech zone” that neither the student-plaintiffs nor other administrators knew existed.
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