Florida college To Pay Students For Violating Their Free Speech

The University of Florida (UF) agreed yesterday to pay their Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) student chapter $66,000, and amend their school policy to allow conservative groups to have access to more financial resources.

In December of last year, the UF student YAF chapter filed a lawsuit against the school for allegedly violating students’ First and Fourteenth Amendment rights.

The lawsuit stemmed from the University designating the chapter as a “non-budgeted” organization, meaning they would be forced to petition the school for funding for each event they seek to host. In addition, the policy disqualified them from being able to use student activity fees to go towards a speaker’s attendance fee.

“[The University of Florida] realized when YAF was taking them to court they’re weren’t going to win,” said Spencer Brown, a YAF spokesperson, to the Daily Caller.” It was very smart for them to recognize their policy was flawed the way it was set up, and that the conservative students in the YAF chapter were getting the rough end of the deal by being labeled a non-budget student organization.”

Brown added, “We had the emails and facts on our side; we had the constitution on our side. It just wasn’t worth it for them to try to prove they were doing it for some other reason. There is never any reason for violating the Constitution.”

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