FREE SPEECH SUIT School Sued for Charging Pro-Life Group for Security

How much does free speech cost?

The University at Buffalo charged a pro-life student group nearly $650 in unconstitutional fees to exercise its freedom of speech during an event in April, a lawsuit alleges.

UB Students for Life, an official student organization at the school since 2012, held a pro-life abortion debate on April 18 and were instructed by school officials to hire university police to attend the event since it involved controversial expression. School officials later charged the group $649.63, or $150 more than the groups entire annual Student Association funding even though one of the officers sat outside and read the newspaper.

A public university is commonly known as the marketplace of ideas, according to the 33-page lawsuit, which was filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York. That marketplace depends on free and vigorous debate between students debate that is silenced when university policies regulate speech based on content and viewpoint and vest administrators with unbridled discretion to impose fees for the exercise of speech.

- David Hacker, senior legal counsel, Alliance Defending Freedom

More than 200 people attended the debate and no major disruptions were reported. At the same time, however, two other student groups the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and UB Freethinkers hosted a debate between a Christian and an atheist and were not levied security fees by university officials.

David Hacker, senior legal counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom, which is representing the group and two of its members, said public universities should encourage rather than stifle the free exchange of ideas.

University officials cannot arbitrarily decide to deem an event controversial and then weigh down students with burdensome fees to engage in constitutionally protected free speech, Hacker said in a statement.

Hacker claims that the universitys security fee policy and practice violates the First Amendment because it grants school officials unbridled discretion to discriminate again speech based on content or viewpoint.

These grants of unbridled discretion to UB officials violate the First Amendment because they create a system in which speech is reviewed without any standards, thus giving students no way to prove that a denial, restriction, or relocation of their speech was based on unconstitutional considerations, the lawsuit continues. Because Defendants have failed to establish narrow, objective, and definite standards governing the imposition of security fees on student organization events, there is a substantial risk that UB officials will engage in content and viewpoint discrimination when addressing those applications.

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FREE SPEECH SUIT School Sued for Charging Pro-Life Group for Security