Another Lawsuit Fighting Back Against Mob Rule at UCLA

Another lawsuit is fighting back against mob rule at UCLA.

UCLA is already being sued by Jewish students  for allowing Pro-Hamas mobs to block Jewish students their access to parts of campus.

And now the conservative student group Young Americans for Freedom (YAF)  is suing UCLA for thwarting their attempt to bring a pro-Israel speaker to campus, cowtowing to pro-Hamas mobs who threatened to shut down the event.

The lawsuit charges violations of the  First Amendment rights of the student members of YAF at UCLA who tried to bring the pro-Israel speaker to campus.   To show the poisonous attitude on campus it also quotes from the lawsuit that the Jewish students filed, and says that around the same time UCLA was kowtowing to the pro-Hamas mobs it was impeding attempts by the conservative students to bring Robert Spencer, editor of Jihad Watch to campus, for a May 15 speech  entitled “Why Everything You Know About Palestine is Wrong.”

But on the day the event was scheduled to take place University officials locked the room in the Student Union where Spencer was scheduled to speak.  They then said, citing security concerns about protestors,  that he could only speak at a far away location on the outer reaches of campus.  The conservative students at that point declined to go forward with the speech.

Spencer told the California Globe that he was not surprised UCLA officials impeded his talk. “I was disappointed but not surprised by UCLA’s blocking of my speech there. Like most other universities, they’re run by left-fascists who fear and hate all opposing viewpoints,” he said. “I hope that the lawsuit will help compel the universities to allow differing perspectives to be heard and end the left’s stranglehold over them.”

The lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the Central District of California. Young Americans for Freedom, whose members at UCLA tried to bring Spencer to campus, are being represented by two conservative legal outfits: the Lex Rex Institute in Long Beach, California and the Lakewood, Colorado-based Mountain States Legal Foundation.

Mountain States Legal Foundation lawyer James Kerwin told the California Globe that the lawsuit was part of the fight for free speech on campuses where too often, like at UCLA, administrators cater to censorious mobs.

“The stakes could not be higher,” he emailed. “Society relies on universities—especially public universities run with taxpayer dollars—to train future generations of American leaders to respect different points of view and the values of free speech and open inquiry.  It is not an exaggeration to say that when universities fail to carry out this mission and instead encourage students’ authoritarian impulses to silence anyone with whom they disagree, the future is put at risk.  Whether UCLA’s leaders are personally ideologically committed to fashionable “woke” ideologies, including anti-Israel views, or simply because they lack the courage to stand up to student activists, the outcome is the same: UCLA is failing at its most fundamental job and letting the cancellation mobs win.”

The lawsuit says that University officials did everything they could to impede Spencer’s appearance, starting with their initial refusal to even grant permission for the event when it was first requested in March.

“UCLA repeatedly ignored requests for information, withheld paperwork approvals, prevented Plaintiffs from effectively advertising in advance of the event, and engaged in other bureaucratic delay tactics,” the lawsuit contends.

“When that did not work, UCLA resorted to less subtle forms of censorship. At the very last minute, just before the lecture was scheduled to take place, UCLA pulled a fast one: locking the doors to the event space, and claiming that the talk needed to be moved to an out-of-the way location because of purported security concerns arising from threatened counter-protest activity.”

But UCLA administrators’ refusal “to allow the event to go forward as planned” and essentially “forced its cancellation. As a result, UCLA prevented Mr. Spencer from giving his talk and reaching his intended audience. “

Instead, the lawsuit says, UCLA administrators catered to the mob and gave the student protestors a heckler’s  veto over the event. “Defendants also violated the First Amendment for the independent reason that when they locked the lecture hall doors and tried to move Plaintiffs’ event to an out-of-the-way venue, they gave  official government sanction to a potential campus “shout down” mob that set out to prevent Plaintiffs from having their say in public. “

Moreover, “Even if one could reasonably believe that UCLA officials were neutral on the question of Israel (which, to be clear, they were not), they still violated the First Amendment by taking the easy way out when the mob threatened to cancel Plaintiffs’ speech—choosing not to enforce laws against disruptive and potentially violent “shout down” tactics, but instead choosing to silence Plaintiffs, the target of the mob’s threats.”

Interestingly, the lawsuit also objects to  new UCLA policies, quietly enacted in September, that could further hamper conservative students’ free speech rights and is another bow to mob rule.  If a proposed speaker draws protests his presence is considered a “Major Event” with extra security costs. But the number of Major Events are limited due to costs. So this allows woke students to shut down the event with a heckler’s veto.  By making conservative events too costly their number would be limited.

“The policies effectively place a cap on the number of pro-Israel and conservative speaking events on campus for the school year,” the lawsuit explains, “while allowing an unlimited number of left-wing and anti-Israel speakers to present their views. The policies also incentivize left-wing activists to create as much mayhem as possible during conservative events, so as to more quickly reach the speech cap set forth in UCLA’s new rules. “

The lawsuit says the rules are unconstitutionally vague and asks the Court to bar UCLA from enforcing them.

Lex Rex Institute lawyer Alexander Haberbush, who is also representing the Young Americans for Freedom students,  told the California Globe that the central issue in the case was UCLA’s failure to remain viewpoint neutral as required by the First Amendment.  “The central principle at stake in this case is the protection of free speech and the prohibition against viewpoint discrimination by public institutions,” he emailed. “As a public university, UCLA is obligated to remain neutral in regulating speech on its campus, regardless of the content or viewpoint expressed. By denying YAF the opportunity to host Robert Spencer, the university violated that principle and engaged in unlawful suppression of speech it found objectionable.”

The UCLA media office did not reply to requests for comment.