Federal Court Orders California College To Drop Censorship Policy

Authored by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times,

A federal judge ordered a California community college on Aug. 2 not to enforce a poster policy that was used against three students whose anti-communist posters were taken down.

U.S. District Judge Jennifer Thurston found that the poster policy of Fresno-based Clovis Community College violated the students’ First Amendment and 14th Amendment rights.

The policy forbade students from displaying material at the taxpayer-funded school containing language or themes deemed “inappropriate” or “offensive.”

The new order also applies to the State Center Community College District (SCCCD), the state district where the college is located. The district is home to four community colleges, including Clovis.

The judge issued a permanent injunction preventing the school and the district “from enforcing, by policy or practice, any unlawful viewpoint—discriminatory, overbroad, or vague regulation, or prior restraint, on the content of the speech of recognized student clubs, including but not limited to bans on ‘inappropriate’ or ‘offensive’ language.”

All the parties in the lawsuit, including Clovis and the district, consented to the order.

The college and the district agreed in a separate settlement to cover $250,000 of the students’ legal expenses and pay the three students each $20,000 in damages. The settlement also requires a $20,000 payment to their group, the campus chapter of Young Americans for Freedom (YAF).

In addition, the settlement requires the district to conduct annual First Amendment training sessions for all administrators going forward.

The new order came after the judge issued a preliminary injunction against the school in October 2022 blocking the poster policy.

“The mere threat of enforcement of an unconstitutional restriction on speech may create a chilling effect sufficient to show irreparable harm,” Thurston wrote at the time.

The policy “undermines the school’s own interest in fostering a diversity of viewpoints on campus, thus frustrating, rather than promoting, the College’s basic educational mission.”

The case goes back to November 2021, when the students wanted to criticize authoritarianism.

Alejandro Flores, Daniel Flores, and Juliette Colunga said they secured permission from campus administrators to hang three posters on bulletin boards inside the academic buildings at Clovis, as required by the college’s policy at the time.

The posters promoted freedom and listed the death tolls of communist regimes, associating communism with the “blind arrogance of the left.”

Juliette Colunga, a member of Young Americans for Freedom, at Clovis Community College in California, in a file photo. (Courtesy of Alvarez Photography Studio)

But the school later banned the public display of the posters and withheld permission for the club members to display pro-life posters, the students said.

The students sued and in October 2022 were granted the order temporarily blocking the poster policy. The other side appealed, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed the lower court’s order in August 2023, finding the policy was unconstitutional because it gave administrators unlimited discretion to suppress speech that they didn’t approve.

The Ninth Circuit upheld Thurston’s finding that the policy was too broad and vague to survive constitutional scrutiny. The circuit court also said it rejected an argument by Clovis that because the college later “rescinded the original Flyer Policy,” the court was deprived of the legal authority to hear the case.

“We won. We showed the school they were wrong,” YAF-Clovis founder Alejandro Flores said in a statement provided by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), which represented the students in the lawsuit.

“If you think your speech is being stifled, don’t stay quiet, because when you stay quiet, nothing changes.”

FIRE attorney Daniel Ortner told The Epoch Times the judge’s new ruling was an “enormous victory for over 50,000 community college students in California and for the First Amendment.”

“You can’t take down posters because they’re offensive,” he said.

Jill Wagner, spokesperson for the district, and Stephanie Babb, spokesperson for the college, confirmed that administrators had made changes to their poster policies following the case.

“The court determined that a few words in the prior Clovis Community College flyer posting procedure needed to be changed. In response, SCCCD updated its policy to apply to all campuses,” they told The Epoch Times by email.

“A settlement was reached to avoid the cost, uncertainty, and distractions that come with any litigation,” they said.

“SCCCD is committed to upholding the values of the First Amendment and we look forward to ensuring that all members of our community recognize the virtues and benefits of free speech.”