Judges Rule College President Violated First Amendment
An appellate court has ruled that the president of the College of Staten Island violated the First Amendment when she cancelled a student government election because she believed an issue of a student newspaper, the College Voice, was a “thinly veiled student activity fee funded piece(s) of campaign literature for the Student Union slate.”
According to an article by the First Amendment Center, Judge Guido Calabresi wrote in the court’s opinion that ". . . .when a public university establishes a student media outlet and requires no initial restrictions on content, it may not censor, retaliate, or otherwise chill that outlet’s speech, or the speech of the student journalists who produce it, on the basis of content or viewpoints expressed through that outlet.”
The 2-1 ruling by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was announced July 13. The case originated in 1997.
In addition to ruling against President Marlene Springer, the court also remanded the case to a district court to determine whether Springer should have been granted qualified immunity by the district court. Springer retired from the college in 2006.