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DOJ Stands Up For Campus Free Speech In Student’s Federal Lawsuit

   DailyWire.com
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The Department of Justice (DOJ) on Monday filed a Statement of Interest in a federal lawsuit brought by a college student who says his First Amendment rights were denied.

The student, J. Michael Brown, sued his former college for stopping him from trying to spread the word about Young Americans for Liberty (YAL), a student organization with which he was involved. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) filed a complaint in U.S. District Court in September on behalf of Brown.

Brown was attending Jones County Junior College (JCJC) at the time of the incident, but has since transferred to the University of Southern Mississippi. The lawsuit says that campus police stopped Brown twice from exercising his free-speech rights. The first incident involved a large inflatable beach ball, which Brown and a former JCJC student who worked for YAL called a “free speech ball.” The two men placed the ball in a large, grassy, central area of campus and encouraged students to write messages of their choosing on the ball. When students wrote on the ball, Brown and the other former student spoke to them about free speech and other civil liberties. Brown and the former student remained with the ball for about an hour and in no way impeded students from moving around the campus. The two men then started moving the ball around campus, always in places that would not impede foot traffic. When the two placed the ball near the Administration Building, a JCJC staff person told them they needed prior approval for their activity.

The second incident involved Brown and another student holding up a sign to poll others on recreational marijuana. Campus police at that time told them they couldn’t do that as they had not sought prior permission for the activity.

“Some people get in trouble for smoking weed, but at Jones College, I got in trouble just for trying to talk about it,” Brown said in a statement at the time. “College is for cultivating thought and learning and encouraging civil discourse with your peers. That’s not what’s happening at Jones College.”

FIRE sent a letter to JCJC offering to help broaden First Amendment protections for students, but the school didn’t respond.

Now, Brown and YAL are getting some help from the DOJ, who filed a Statement of Interest opposing “repressive speech codes” on college campuses.

“The United States of America is not a police state,” said Assistant Attorney General Eric Dreiband for the Civil Rights Division in a statement. “Repressive speech codes are the indecent hallmark of despotic, totalitarian regimes. They have absolutely no place in our country, and the First Amendment outlaws all tyrannical policies, practices, and acts that abridge the freedom of speech.”

U.S. Attorney Mike Hurst for the Southern District of Mississippi and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos also weighed in on Brown’s lawsuit.

“Unconstitutional restrictions on our first freedoms to speak and assemble directly threaten our liberty as Americans,” Hurst said. “While some may disagree with the content of one’s speech, we should all be fighting for everyone’s Constitutional right to speak. I pray JCJC will do the right thing, change its policies to comply with the U.S. Constitution, and encourage its students to speak and assemble throughout our free state.”

DeVos added that Brown’s case was “yet another concerning example of students encountering limits on what, when, where, and how they learn.”

“This is happening far too often on our nation’s campuses. This Administration won’t let students be silenced. We stand with their right to speak and with their right to learn truth through the free exchange of ideas—particularly those with which they might disagree,” she added.

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