Tag Archives: Topic: Colleges

David Hacker at the Speak Up Movement Blog: We have a lot to be thankful for this year at Alliance Defending Freedom as our clients prevailed time and again in cases across the country. Here’s a recap of the top university victories in 2012 . . .

“Americans United for Separation of Church and State today asked the U.S. Military Academy at West Point to stop including prayers during official events. In a letter to Academy Superintendent Lt. Gen. David H. Huntoon and other officials, Americans United asserted that the academy’s prayer policy runs afoul of the Constitution and violates the rights of cadets.”

WorldNetDaily: More than six of 10 colleges and universities across the United States have yet to figure out the First Amendment, because their “speech codes” conflict with the Constitution, according to a new report from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. “FIRE surveyed 409 schools for this report and found that over 62 percent maintain severely restrictive . . .

Alan Sears at Alliance Defending Freedom: If you’ve followed the work of Alliance Defending Freedom for long, you won’t be surprised to learn that, at Christmas time as throughout the year, Christian college students across the country – including your children and grandchildren – have to contend with administrators (paid by your tax dollars) who leave “no room in the inn” for faith and free expression.

Jeremy Tedesco at the Speak Up Movement Blog: Alliance Defending Freedom recently settled the lawsuit it brought on behalf of Julea Ward against Eastern Michigan University. EMU expelled Julea–a stellar student with a 3.91 GPA who was nearly done with the program–for merely inquiring whether she should refer a client with whom she had a values conflict

KTVU.com: The Young Americans for Liberty at UC Berkeley, a campus libertarian group, started their protest around 10 a.m. at Sproul Plaza to speak out against a November decision by the Associated Students of the University of California Senate to ban the charitable group from campus because of its alleged homophobic practices.

California Catholic Daily: The student government at the University of California-Berkeley passed a resolution last month that would ban Salvation Army bell ringers and their iconic red kettles from campus this Christmas because of the Christian organization’s alleged bias against homosexuality.

Inside Higher Ed: The six-month lifespan of Queer at Patrick Henry College, a blog focusing on the struggles of gay students at the evangelical Christian college in Virginia, has been turbulent, to say the least.

Kevin Theriot appeared on the Zeb Bell Show to discuss the Julia Ward case. | MP3 audio 14:38 mins

How Appealing links to a report and the ruling in Dixon v. U. of Toledo.

The First Amendment’s protection of freedom of speech applies to the states through its incorporation into the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Students in schools retain First Amendment rights; however, school officials, acting as parens patriae, have latitude to discipline students for their speech in some instances. This analysis will focus on the First Amendment rights of students, with particular emphasis on off-campus speech. Part one will discuss the Supreme Court precedent on the issue of student speech on and off the school campus. Part II will analyze the inconsistencies among the lower courts when addressing student speech cases. Part III will summarize the current state of student speech litigation, and Part IV will examine the New York City Department of Education’s policies related to student speech.

Alliance Defending Freedom Blog: You’ll be shocked at the unconstitutional tactics colleges and universities use to silence and intimidate Christians. On campuses all across America, school officials . . .

LA Times: Score a big victory for critics of the University of California’s contemporary-style and much derided new logo. Responding to a online wave of revolt against the sculptural design, university officials announced Friday that they are suspending further use of the logo.

Baptist Press: ADF is pleased Ward and “her constitutionally protected rights have been vindicated,” said a spokesman for the legal organization. “Public universities shouldn’t force students to violate their religious beliefs to get a degree. The 6th Circuit rightly understood this and ruled appropriately, so the university has done the right thing in settling this case,” ADF Senior Legal Counsel Jeremy Tedesco said in a written release.

Business Insider: Not only do they want their tuition back, but graduates suing their law schools want the institutions to own up to their alleged lies.

The College Fix (includes video): A parade of University of Virginia students filmed a YouTube video recently that praised a row of twinkling Christmas trees and other holiday fare adorning a row of front porches along the school’s famed Lawn dorms and pitched administrators to let the decorations stay -but alas- campus officials told students to pack it up

Heather Gebelin Hacker at Speak Up Movement: At Christmas, one would hope that the only controversy surrounding the Salvation Army and their iconic bell ringers would be their fictional dispute with Homelessville and Justin Timberlake. But for a student body obsessed with political correctness at any cost, the mere presence of the bell ringers near campus doing their traditional collection of funds for the needy is intolerable if they are doing so in the name of a Christian organization.

San Diego Gay and Lesbian News: Elizabeth L. Hillman, a respected scholar in military law and history who was part of the fight to overturn “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” has been appointed Academic Dean at the University of California Hastings College of the Law.

WorldNetDaily: ADF said even though counseling referrals are a common and accepted professional practice, the university instead chose to expel Ward “when she sought to avoid violating her religious beliefs by referring a potential client to another counselor.” Senior Legal Counsel Jeremy Tedesco, who argued before the court in October of last year, said public universities “shouldn’t force students to violate their religious beliefs to get a degree.” “The 6th Circuit rightly understood this and ruled appropriately, so the university has done the right thing in settling this case,” he said. “When Julea sought to refer a potential client to another qualified counselor – a common, professional practice that is endorsed by her profession’s code of ethics – EMU denied the referral. Then it attacked and questioned her religious beliefs, ultimately expelling her from the program. We are pleased that Julea and her constitutionally protected rights have been vindicated.”

Daily Caller at Yahoo News: Legal proceedings began in 2009 when the Alliance Defense Fund (now called Alliance Defending Freedom) filed a lawsuit on Ward’s behalf. At the time, she was training to become a K-12 school counselor in Eastern Michigan’s graduate counseling program. The Alliance Defense Fund had sought a court order requiring EMU to change its curriculum to permit referrals in cases when the religious beliefs of counseling students could cause a professionalism conflict. Such cases could occur when sexual relationships, abortion, premarital sex and other contentious moral issues arise.

AnnArbor.com: Ward’s legal counsel, Jeremy Tedesco, said he is pleased and feels that Ward’s constitutionally protected rights have been “vindicated.” “Public universities shouldn’t force students to violate their religious beliefs to get a degree. The Sixth Circuit rightly understood this and ruled appropriately, so the university has done the right thing in settling this case,” Tedesco said.

Detroit Free Press: The lawsuit was filed in April 2009 by the Alliance Defense Fund on behalf of Julea Ward, a student in the university’s Graduate School Counseling Program, where she was training to become a K-12 school counselor.

Eastern Michigan University has agreed to settle an Alliance Defending Freedom lawsuit filed on behalf of Julea Ward, a graduate student whom the university expelled from a counseling program for abiding by her religious beliefs. As a result, a federal district court issued an agreed-upon order of dismissal Monday.

Jordan Lorence at SpeakUp Movement: Both Will’s column and Lukianoff’s book show the importance of Alliance Defending Freedom and allies to fight these unconstitutional policies, and why students and faculty need to stand up for liberty and freedom of expression. Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys stand ready to protect students and faculty members from these unconstitutional policies restricting their speech. Universities are no longer a marketplace of ideas, encouraging robust debate, when they adopt and enforce these unconstitutional policies.

Cardinal Newman Society: In a Nov. 20th memo obtained by The Cardinal Newman Society, Gonzaga University President Thayne McCulloh has announced to faculty and staff that in response to the HHS mandate it will begin covering contraceptives starting next month.

Education News: The student government at the University of California-Berkeley (CAL) passed a resolution last month that would ban Salvation Army bell ringers and their iconic red kettles from campus this Christmas because of the Christian organization’s alleged bias against homosexuality.

Matt Sharp appeared on the Bob Dutko Show | MP3 audio 11:05 mins | Related Alliance Defending Freedom press releases: ‘Christmas’ trees axed at NC college and Good grief! Atheist group disgruntled with ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas’

Jordan Lorence at the Speak Up Movement University Blog: Each year, many liberals and secularists deny that there is any effort by anyone to censor Christmas. They claim that “Religious Right” leaders diabolically promote a phoney “War on Christmas” in order to bamboozle ignorant and gullible Christians into donating money for their efforts to thwart this allegedly nonexistent threat.

Greg Baylor at Speak Up Movement University Blog: The Florida Department of Education recently ended its discriminatory exclusion of a Christian college from one of its tuition assistance programs.

Matt Sharp appeared on KMCO with Greg Knapp last week to discuss the Christmas Tree controversy at Western Piedmont College. | MP3 audio 7:16 mins

Volokh Conspiracy: The Georgetown Center for the Constitution will be devoted to studying and developing originalist textualism.

American Freedom Law Center: Tomorrow, Robert Muise, Co-Founder and Senior Counsel of the American Freedom Law Center (AFLC), is presenting oral argument in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in defense of Crystal Dixon, a former human resources administrator at the University of Toledo who was fired in 2008 for expressing her personal, Christian viewpoint on homosexuality in an op-ed published in the local newspaper.

Dave Cortman on the Janet Mefferd Show. | MP3 audio 15:37 mins

George Will at Human Events: In 2007, Keith John Sampson, a middle-aged student working his way through Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis as a janitor, was declared guilty of racial harassment. Without granting Sampson a hearing, the university administration — acting as prosecutor, judge and jury — convicted him of “openly reading [a] book related to a historically and racially abhorrent subject.” “Openly.” “Related to.” Good grief.

Lebovits, Gerald, Gewuerz, Drew and Hunker, Christopher, Winning the Moot Court Oral Argument: A Guide for Intra- and Intermural Moot Court Competitors (November 20, 2012). Capital University Law Review, Vol. 41, 2013. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2160641 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2160641

Education News: Why bring this up now, you might ask. Well, recent reports suggest that a new generation of Right-of-centre students are suffering a similar persecution. Such is the institutionalised and increasing hatred of Tory students at Oxford that last week a group of them demanded the same equal-rights protection as gays, disabled people and ethnic minorities. Conservative members of ,Corpus Christi College’s junior common room (JCR) claim they are “often actively isolated, personally attacked and made to feel unwelcome” because of their political views.

Derek Bekebred at Public Discourse: Students across the country have been pushing back against liberal dominance, but we cannot solve the problem on our own. We need the full support of our party and conservative allies . . . Instead of abandoning fundamental portions of the Republican platform, it’s time for the party to embrace a new one: outreach to America’s universities on social issues.

Michael Barone at National Review: he willingness to lie systematically is also a requirement for administrators who profess a love of free speech while imposing speech codes and penalizing students for violations. All of which provides plenty of business for Lukianoff’s FIRE, which opposes speech codes and brings lawsuits on behalf of students — usually, but not always, conservatives — who are penalized.

Matt Sharp appeared on WTAM 1100 with Bob Frantz. | MP3 audio 9:10 mins | Related: NC College restores Christmas tree

Education News (linking to MyFoxBoston): “It’s ridiculous that anyone would have to think twice about using the word ‘Christmas’ as part of a Christmas tree sale,” said Matt Sharp, an attorney with Alliance Defending Freedom. ADF sent a letter to officials at Western Piedmont Community College urging them to either reconsider their decision to censor the word “Christmas” – or else face a possible lawsuit.

Washington Post: Daniel F. Attridge in July will become dean of Columbus School of Law at Catholic University, recruited from his position as managing partner of the Washington law office of Kirkland & Ellis.

Todd Starnes at Fox News: The student group contacted Alliance Defending Freedom — a legal advocacy group that handles many First Amendment issues. The ADF promptly sent the college a letter urging them to either reconsider their decision or face possible legal action. “We’re pleased the college did the right thing,” attorney Matt Sharp told Fox News. “It really is ridiculous they tried to make this club use the word holiday instead of Christmas.”

Christian Post: “It’s ridiculous that anyone would have to think twice about using the word ‘Christmas’ as part of a Christmas tree sale,” said Legal Counsel Matt Sharp. “Not only is it perfectly constitutional to use the word ‘Christmas,’ it is unconstitutional to prohibit use of it. This is another perfect example of the immense misunderstanding that far too many college officials have about what the First Amendment truly requires.”

Todd Starnes at Fox News: It’s ridiculous that anyone would have to think twice about using the word ‘Christmas’ as part of a Christmas tree sale,” said Matt Sharp, an attorney with Alliance Defending Freedom.

LifeSiteNews: In a letter to the KSA Director of Student Services, John Carpay of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, who is representing Protectores Vitae, wrote, “We sincerely hope that it will not be necessary for Mr. Capko and other students to sue the KSA in order to secure their right to freely associate on the Kwantlen campus, free from discrimination by the student association that they are required by law to join.”

College changes ‘Christmas tree sale’ to ‘holiday tree sale’
in student club’s ads for charitable fundraiser

Inside Higher Ed: Florida officials have agreed to declare Florida Christian College’s students eligible for a state student aid program, settling a lawsuit by the college, The News Service of Florida reported

Religion Clause Blog: Alliance Defending Freedom issued a Nov. 15 press release reporting on the settlement, and also made available the full text of the Mediation Settlement Agreement.

Speak Up Movement University Blog: Beginning the spring of 2013, Alliance Defending Freedom and Speak Up University want to host a “Free Speech on Campus” event at your school. We will provide a meal and information about your rights on campus, as well as looking specifically at the policies from your school.

Jordan Lorence at Speak Up Movement University Blog: I attended the annual banquet of the Federalist Society Thursday night in Washington D.C., and learned about increasing efforts by law schools to restrict the number of debates Fed Soc sponsors on law school campuses around the nation.

John G. Browning at Inside Higher Ed: The Harvard Law Review, arguably the most prestigious and widely circulated law review, had a circulation of 10,895 in 1963–1964. By the 2010–2011 academic year, that figure had plummeted to 1,896.

LifeNews: Catholic Fordham University is coming under fire from pro-life advocates for rejecting a pro-life speaker but then deciding it is okay to bring pro-infanticide speaker Peter Singer to campus. Fordham University’s president Fr. Joseph McShane, S.J. determined conservative and pro-life author Ann Coulter was too “hateful and needlessly provocative” to speak on campus.

First Things: This is welcome news. Next semester, Stanford Law School will start the nation’s first law school clinic focusing on religious liberty. Here’s the announcement from the Stanford website . . .

Crisis Magazine: The success that the gay community has achieved in shedding the “deviant” label has relied upon convincing the heterosexual world that homosexual behavior is perfectly normal. The recent uproar over a social work course titled “Deviant Behavior” at Franciscan University of Steubenville—which lists homosexuality as a form of deviant behavior—demonstrates just how vigilant the gay community remains in confronting anyone who might suggest that homosexual behavior could be anything but normal. It also shows how difficult it is for faithful Catholic institutions to teach students what the Church says about the nature of homosexual acts.

The Hill: Retiring Rep. Ron Paul plans to deliver speeches on college campuses next year and beyond, continuing his message of liberty and reducing the size of the federal government. In an interview with The Hill, the Texas Republican clearly indicated that he isn’t ready for the rocking chair.

Greg Lukianoff at WSJ: At Yale University, you can be prevented from putting an F. Scott Fitzgerald quote on your T-shirt. At Tufts, you can be censured for quoting certain passages from the Quran. Welcome to the most authoritarian institution in America: the modern university—”a bizarre, parallel dimension,” as Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, calls it.

Travis Barham at Speak Up Movement University Blog (video embedded): But our friends at FIRE recently unveiled a new way of illustrating the problems with speech codes—a video replete with whiteboard illustrations.

PatriotPost.us: Coming to the defense of these children and young people is the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF, formerly the Alliance Defense Fund), whose senior legal counsel David Hacker accurately noted, “Little girls should not be exposed to naked men, period. A college’s notions about ‘non-discrimination’ don’t change that.” Furthermore, in a letter to the college13, Hacker wrote, “Clearly, allowing a person who is biologically a man to undress and expose himself to young girls places those girls at risk for emotional distress and harm. Any reasonable person would view this as dangerous to the young girls involved.” Indeed! Unfortunately, Evergreen State College has subjugated reason to political correctness at the expense of innocent children.

Rebecca Downs at Live Action News: Wednesday night, Students for Life of America’s group, Law Students for Life, and Harvard Right to Life held a debate, as part of the Law Students for Life tour. The debate was titled “Should Roe Survive Another 40 Years?” The event was broadcast live via USTREAM, and it is still up on the “Resources” section of the Law Students for Life website for those who are interested . . . Instead, the event first featured a presentation from Steve Aden, from Alliance Defending Freedom, followed by Professor Teresa Collett, of the University of St. Thomas School of Law. Now, I consider myself someone well-versed in the pro-life movement and the Roe v. Wade decision. However, there was much I learned from Aden’s carefully crafted presentation, which started off with the premise that Roe v. Wade is the single worst decision the Court has made and is a Supreme Court decision that the pro-choice side has never been able to get the other side to fully accept. The rest of his presentation involved the top-ten reasons to support his premise. The following portion of the article is my recounting of Aden’s reasons and explanations.

SCOTUS Blog: On Thursday, the en banc U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, by a vote of eight to seven, held that the 2006 voter-approved amendment to the Michigan constitution, which prohibited any use of race in the admissions process to any of Michigan’s public colleges and universities, was itself unconstitutional.  The court held that the amendment had impermissibly “reorder[ed] the political process in Michigan to place special burdens on minority interests.”

Emily Newburger at Harvard Law School:  Michael Klarman’s scholarship has focused on the effect that court rulings have on social reform movements. He argues that when courts get ahead of public opinion, political backlash often follows. That’s what he found in an earlier book he wrote on race and the U.S. Supreme Court, and it is a phenomenon he has also observed in cases involving the death penalty and abortion. In his new book, “From the Closet to the Altar: Courts, Backlash, and the Struggle for Same-Sex Marriage” (Oxford), the HLS professor explores whether the same effect has taken place when it comes to same-sex marriage litigation.

Texas A&M University has agreed to revise its student organization funding policy in the wake of an Alliance Defending Freedom lawsuit filed after officials denied funds to a conservative student group while approving funds for other groups.

Florida education officials have agreed to a settlement that will allow students at Kissimmee’s Florida Christian College to participate in a state grant program open to students at other religious and non-religious schools.

David Hacker at the Speak Up Movement University Blog: Last month, the California Advisory Committee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights issued a report on Equal Educational Opportunity and Free Speech on Public College and University Campuses in California. The focus of the report was whether harassment policies at these institutions intrude too much on student free speech. As we’ve written about before on these pages, overbroad and vague harassment policies are major contributors to the national speech code problem. Alliance Defending Freedom has represented students who challenged these policies in California (multiple times), Washington, Georgia, and Pennsylvania.

Rapid City Journal: The Center for Religious Expression, a Memphis, Tenn., based nonprofit, filed the lawsuit on Gavin’s behalf. The lawsuit names Acting President Duane Hrncir, Vice President of Student Affairs Patricia Mahon and Surbeck Center Director Stephanie Lindsley as defendants. The center’s chief counsel, Nate Kellum, said Gavin is not selling phones or credit cards and that being confined to a table infringes on his rights. “It is not conducive to his type of speech,” Kellum said. “They are classifying his speech as commercial speech, and it is not.”

David Hacker appeared on 570 KVI with John Carlson to discuss the situation at Evergreen College in Washington State. | MP3 audio 10:52 mins

Ilya Somin at the Volokh Conspiracy: As co-blogger David Bernstein notes, the two of us conducted anonymous online presidential polls of our Constitutional Law I classes. Here are my results, for a poll conducted over the weekend just before election …

David Hacker at the Speak Up Movement University Blog: Several of Harris’ posts include examples from Alliance Defending Freedom cases, like College Republicans at San Francisco State University v. Reed (a speech code case) and Roberts v. Haragan (a speech zone case).  Here are links to each part of the series . . .

LifeSiteNews: A controversial pro-life group at one of Australia’s highest ranked universities has been barred from affiliation, funding and advertising by the university’s student union.

ABC30 (includes video – Oct. 29): But the law says otherwise, argues Arizona-based religious liberties group “Alliance Defending Freedom.” They sent a letter to the college warning it “may be held liable” if something happens in the locker room . . . Joseph Backholm is the Director of the Family Policy Institute of Washington, he said, “Most of us who have daughters have the expectation that when our daughters are in women’s restrooms they will not be exposed to naked men.”

Jeremy Tedesco appeared on the Frank Pastore Show to discuss the situation. | MP3 audio 25 mins

One News Now: But Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) attorney Jeremy Tedesco says the man’s action violates the law. “This is a biologically created man who is exposing himself in a women’s restroom to minors between the ages of 6 and 18 — and that clearly violates the indecent exposure statute in Washington, and it probably would in every other jurisdiction,” states the attorney

Matt Driscoll at Seattle Weekly: Yesterday on The Daily Weekly I wrote about the dustup at The Evergreen State College involving the use of the college recitation center locker room by transgender student who identifies as female but was born male. Specifically, Colleen Francis’ use of the sauna in the female locker room has led Arizona-based religious group Alliance Defending Freedom to go on the attack.

Heather Gebelin Hacker appeared on the Georgene Rice Show to discuss the case. | MP3 audio 9:33 mins

MyNorthWest.com (includes audio): Jeremy Tedesco, an attorney for some of the families who say the behavior is inappropriate, say the school needs to put a stop to the policy immediately. “They’re saying that their non-discrimination policy, which prohibits gender identity and gender expression discrimination, doesn’t require them to leave the locker room and not come back,” Tedesco told the Dori Monson Show. “It’s just non-discrimination gone wild. It shows the problem with these expanding non-discrimination policies, which are very popular nowadays.”