Students, Clovis Community College settle First Amendment lawsuit over poster rules
A group of politically conservative students and Clovis Community College have agreed to settle a two-year-old lawsuit over the students’ First Amendment rights to free expression.
The students were members of the Young Americans for Freedom club at Clovis Community College in 2021 when college officials ordered them to remove some posters and denied permission to post other flyers promoting the club’s anti-communist and anti-abortion positions on bulletin boards on the campus.
The students – Alejandro Flores, Daniel Flores and Juliette Colunga – sued then-college President Lori Bennett and other administrators in federal court in August 2022, alleging that the college’s rules for students clubs’ posters violated their rights to free expression under the U.S. Constitution. U.S. District Court Judge Jennifer L. Thurston ruled in October 2022 that the poster policies’ represented likely violations of the First and Fourteenth amendments by being overly broad and vague, with provisions against “inappropriate” or “offensive” language posing “an unacceptable risk of the suppression of ideas otherwise protected by the First Amendment.”
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the lower court ruling in August 2023, saying the school’s policy on posting flyers on campus “invites ‘arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement.’ ”
The students were represented in their lawsuit by attorneys for FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. In a statement, FIRE said the stipulated settlement calls for the State Center Community College District — the agency that oversees Clovis Community College, Fresno City College, Reedley College and Madera Community College — to pay the three student plaintiffs $20,000 each in damages, as well as $20,000 to the Young America’s Foundation and attorney fees of $250,000.
In court documents filed last week, the students and the college agreed to stipulations that the prior poster policy violated the U.S. Constitution, and that the college officials violated the students rights when they enforced the policy and denied permission to post the flyers.
The flyers at the heart of the case carried anti-communist messages that school administrators said “made ‘several people … very uncomfortable,’ ” according to email exchanges entered as evidence in the case. The group also claimed it was denied permission to post anti-abortion flyers on interior bulletin boards on the campus.
The agreement also added the State Center Community College District as a defendant in the case to be bound by a permanent injunction against enforcing any form of unconstitutional prior restraint, whether at the Clovis campus or any other district campuses.
“We won. We showed the school they were wrong, … ” Alejandro Flores said in a statement issued by FIRE. “If you think your speech is being stifled, don’t stay quiet, because when you stay quiet, nothing changes.”
As part of the stipulation, the college district will be required to adopt and implement a replacement poster policy. The new language makes no reference to inappropriate or offensive language for posters, but continues to require that posters or flyers be submitted to the college’s Student Activities Office for stamping and dating prior to posting on interior bulletin boards on the campus.
Student organizations will be limited to posting 15 copies of a poster for up to 10 days, or until after an event that they promote.
For external free-speech kiosks on the Clovis campus, anyone may post material without prior approval unless the posters are defamatory, or obscene according to legal standards, or provoke unlawful acts.
The settlement also requires the college district to provide annual First Amendment training to all of its managers starting in December.
The Clovis club is a chapter of the national Young America’s Foundation. It is one of about 30 student organizations on the Clovis college campus.
The lawsuit alleged that the students had received approval in November 2021 to post several different anti-communist flyers on indoor bulletin boards inside two academic buildings on the Clovis campus at Willow and International avenues.
Within days of the students’ posting of the material, the complaint alleged that Bennett and several administrators received an email from another college staffer reporting that the flyers “made ‘several people … very uncomfortable.’” That message then set off a flurry of emails among administrators about removing the flyers from the bulletin boards.
The suit accused Bennett of ordering a college vice president and a dean to remove the flyers from the bulletin boards.
Bennett retired from her post as the Clovis college president in January 2023.
The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Over the past 234 years since the First Amendment and the other nine amendments known as the Bill of Rights were ratified in 1791, courts have broadened the meaning of the law to cover not just Congress, but also any level of government at the state or local level, to protect the First Amendment freedoms, including public colleges and universities.
This story was originally published August 5, 2024 at 1:11 PM with the headline "Students, Clovis Community College settle First Amendment lawsuit over poster rules."
