Pockets are racist and sexist.
Via Rare:
On Tuesday, 27-year-old Kevin Shaw filed a lawsuit against Pierce College in Los Angeles, Calif., after he says his First Amendment right to free speech was violated by the campus’ use of a “free speech area.”
Shaw was prevented from handing out pocket-sized U.S. Constitutions in November on behalf of his student group, Young Americans for Liberty (YAL), for which he currently serves as a chapter president. The community college argued that he was both outside of the designated “free speech area” and did not have a permit to use the zone.
According to Pierce College’s online map, the “free speech area” is made up of a common space only a fraction of the size of the surrounding buildings. It has been described as “roughly the size of three parking spaces.”
Shaw’s lawsuit, which is on its way to a federal court in California, was filed with the help of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). FIRE is a nonprofit which offers legal assistance to students and educators in matters regarding the “freedom of speech, legal equality, due process, religious liberty, and sanctity of conscience.”
FIRE revealed in a press release that Shaw’s case is the first of their Million Voices Campaign, dedicated to freeing “the voices of 1 million students by striking down unconstitutional speech codes across the country.” Director of Litigation Marieke Tuthill Beck-Coon explains:
Students like Kevin go to college to learn and grow in conversation with their peers, but a free speech quarantine like Pierce’s threatens to punish students who speak their minds in the wrong place. The law is clear: Public colleges like Pierce can’t force students into tiny slices of campus to exercise their First Amendment rights.
YAL Director of Free Speech Alexander Staudt shares the same sentiment, quickly noting in a statement to Rare that the college’s policy “limits students’ free speech rights to an abysmal .003 percent of the total area of Pierce College’s campus.” Staudt also argued that the requirement of a permit unduly gives campus administration “the ability to restrict speech before students even open their mouths.”