Monday, April 28, 2014
Hawaii college sued for stopping students from handing out Constitution
Two students at the University of Hawaii at Hilo are suing the school over alleged First Amendment violations after they were told by a campus official that they couldn't approach fellow students to hand out copies of the Constitution.
Merritt Burch and Anthony Vizzone, members of the campus chapter of Young Americans for Liberty, filed the lawsuit Thursday in federal court, alleging that administrators violated their constitutional rights by stopping group members from passing out copies of the document during an outdoor event in January where student organizations had set up tables to distribute literature.
The students are being represented by Davis Wright Tremaine, the law firm that recently helped a student who was blocked last year from handing out copies of the Constitution win a $50,000 settlement against Modesto Junior College in California.
“The First Amendment is not optional at public colleges—it’s the law. Enforcing restrictive ‘free speech zone’ policies that prevent students from passing out copies of the Constitution is impossible to justify," Lukianoff said in a statement.
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6 comments:
The University of Hawaii is another one of those institutions that set up a "Free Speech Zone" and being so concerned about free speech they placed it on the edge of the campus in an area known as muddy or flooded a lot.
Where leftists are in control, rights are not available.
This is a case that shows the fallacy of painting people with broad strokes.
There will be those who say "liberals love to deny freedom of speech" but it should be noted that Greg Lukianoff, head of FIRE and who is on the point of this lawsuit, is liberal in his political beliefs.
There are times when people of all political leanings should come together against anyone who oppresses natural / God given rights.
The true political spectrum is that the far right is no government control at all (anarchy - everyone is free to do anything they like) while the far left is total government control (absolute despotism - no one is free to do anything except what the government likes).
Few people exist at either extreme since most people want the government to control some areas of their lives while staying completely out of other areas.
Which areas of their lives and exactly how much control are the items which are always in contest.
Labels like Liberal and Conservative give a general indication as to where a person stands in the line between left and right but even then there will be individual differences.
Yes, it is unrealistic to simply label people as left/liberal/socialist, or right/conservative, etc. as it is seldom very accurate and usually used in a disparaging way, like calling people "racist" as an attack-word. Too much demonizing of people in this way goes on on this site, especially the over-use and inaccurate use of "leftist" (and variants).
now if they were handing out condoms or literature on "how to be gay" THAT would have been ok.
But handing out that hate filled document is just too much for the hyper-sensitive PC liberal crowd!
Maybe if liberals stopped to actually read the constitution before they wipe their asses with it they might learn something!
I can't imagine why they would want to prevent them giving out the constitution.
What were they thinking?
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