The Young America’s Foundation has won a legal battle, forcing a major college campus to give conservative speakers the same freedoms they give to other speakers.
The lawsuit took over a year, and resulted in a settlement with the University of California (UC), Berkeley that plaintiffs celebrated as a victory for free speech on campus. The institution will pay the Young America’s Foundation $70,000, plus reverse the “high-profile speaker policy,” which the foundation believes was used to stifle conservative voices.
The institution also agrees to rescind the security fee policy, which the foundation considered to be used in discriminatory ways towards conservatives. Lastly, the campus will abolish the “heckler’s veto,” a strategy where leftists would protest until the school shut down a conservative speaking event.
“Young America’s Foundation is thrilled that, after more than a year of UC Berkeley battling against the First Amendment rights of its own students, the university finally felt the heat and saw the light of their unconstitutional censorship,” said YAF Spokesman Spencer Brown in a Young America’s Foundation news release.
“YAF’s landmark victory for free expression—long squelched by Berkeley’s scheming administrators who weaponized flawed policies to target conservatives—shows that the battle for freedom undertaken by YAF on campuses nationwide is a necessary one.”
