A First Amendment lawsuit was filed against a California community college after college officials chilled conservative students’ speech by telling them to tone down their criticisms of Hamas and illegal immigration.
The Young America’s Foundation student activists filed the lawsuit against Golden West College, located in California’s centrist Orange County.
The complaint filed in the lawsuit explained how student activists Matin Samimiat and Annaliese Hutchings were threatened with disciplinary action if they continue to use strong language to discuss hot-button issues with peers.
The College Fix reports:
The conflict began when Hutchings and Samimiat, an Iranian-born student, voiced their opinions at Golden West’s Club Expo 3 months ago.
Their YAF booth displayed a whiteboard that read: “CHANGE MY MIND!!! • It is a privilege to be an American and we should all be thankful for it. • Illegal immigration is a cancer upon any society in the world. • Men do not belong in women’s sports and spaces.”
In response, Samimiat received an email from College Disciplinary Officer Stephanie Smallshaw stating, “My office received several reports regarding Club Expo and some messaging on a white board at your booth. I would like to schedule a meeting so that we can discuss.”
They scheduled a meeting for March 20, and one week prior displayed a whiteboard at the “Goldchella” college preview day event with similar statements, including the phrase “Hamas is a terrorist organization, and they must be wiped from the face of the earth.”
During the meeting with Smallshaw, she allegedly threatened them with disciplinary action, claiming their statements were offensive and potentially incited harm and a call to violence.
Although Samimiat offered to adjust the language of the group’s messages without changing their views, the suit contends, Smallshaw allegedly gave no explicitly clear guidance on what speech would be acceptable.
“I left Iran to enjoy the amazing freedom that the United States offers. Now I find myself threatened with punishment for expressing political opinions—because they happen to be opinions that administrators don’t like,” says Samimiat.
Alan Gura, a lawyer at the Institute for Free Speech who is representing the students, adds that the college’s disciplinary policies are unclear, overly broad, and biased against conservative viewpoints, which violates First Amendment prohibitions against viewpoint discrimination.
The two students have now ceased trying to recruit new students “for fear of having disciplinary proceedings initiated against them, and for being sanctioned under the Student Disciplinary Code, owing to Smallshaw’s threats and to the continuing existence of the Code’s prohibition of ‘hateful behavior aimed at a specific person or group of people,’” says the complaint filed in the lawsuit.
The students “are unsure as to what speech, exactly, would land them in trouble with Smallshaw or any other College Disciplinary Officer under the Code, as they cannot guess as to where officials would draw the line as to what is ‘hateful,’ … what counts as ‘infliction of mental harm,’ and what language ‘demeans, degrades, or disgraces any person’ in an official’s view,” the complaint says.
The lawsuit asks for preliminary and permanent injunctions barring enforcement of the school’s vague and overbroad rules as well as a court decree declaring that the school’s disciplinary code is unconstitutional.
“College is supposed to be a place where students can engage with different ideas. Instead, Golden West College is teaching students that certain widely-held political opinions are off-limits—and that merely expressing these opinions is somehow ‘harmful,’” Hutchings added.
