On Monday, Young America’s Foundation won a major victory for free speech, settling a lawsuit it had filed against the University of California, Berkeley: the university will have to pay YAF $70,000 to reimburse attorneys’ fees, rescind the unconstitutional “high-profile speaker policy,” rescind the viewpoint-discriminatory security fee policy, and abolish its heckler’s veto so that protestors will be barred from blocking conservatives from speaking.
It took over a year for YAF to achieve victory. As YAF noted:
No longer can UC Berkeley place a 3:00 p.m. curfew on conservative speech. No longer can UC Berkeley ban advertisements for Young America’s Foundation-sponsored campus lectures. And no longer can UC Berkeley relegate conservative speakers to remote or inconvenient lecture halls on campus while giving leftist speakers access to preferred locations.
The settlement stated:
The goals of UCPD’s security recommendations will be to: minimize risks to the health and safety of the event participants and audience; minimize risks to the campus and surrounding community; maximize the ability of the event organizers to successfully hold the Major Event; and protect the exercise of rights of free expression by the event organizers, participants, and community …
Additional security fees will not be charged to event sponsors based on concerns that the content of the event or the viewpoints, opinions, or anticipated expression of the sponsors, event performers, or others participating in the event might provoke disturbances or response costs required by such disturbances.
