The campaign of the American left to silence conservatives on campus sustained a massive defeat yesterday, as the University of California, Berkeley reached a legal settlement (text here) to a lawsuit brought against it following cancelation of a speech by Ann Coulter. The co-sponsor of that speech (along with Berkeley College Republicans), Young America’s Foundation (YAF) jubilantly announced, in an article by Spencer Brown:
Following more than a year of hard-fought litigation in the hostile Ninth Circuit, Young America’s Foundation secured victory for free speech against the University of California, Berkeley. Through YAF’s lawsuit and subsequent settlement agreement executed over the weekend, UC Berkeley agreed to the following terms set by Young America’s Foundation:
1) Pay Young America’s Foundation $70,000.
2) Rescind the unconstitutional “high-profile speaker policy.”
3) Rescind the viewpoint-discriminatory security fee policy.
4) Abolish its heckler’s veto – protestors will no longer be able to shut down conservative expression.
This landmark victory for free expression means UC Berkeley can no longer wantonly treat conservative students as second-class members of its community while ignoring the guaranteed protections of the First Amendment.
The lawsuit was handled by the Dhillon Law Group, founded by superstar civil rights lawyer Harmeet Dhillon, who also represents James Damore, the Google engineer fired for posting a memo questioning progressive orthodoxy on sex. She issued a press release stating:
This landmark settlement means that all students at UC Berkeley now have the exciting opportunity to hear a variety of viewpoints on campus without the artificial tax of security fees selectively imposed on disfavored speech.
