TRI In The News

Limited Public Forum or Viewpoint Discrimination?

From One News Now

Original article available here

A 21-year-old Illinois student is suing his community college. The criminal justice student is claiming the school has violated his free-speech rights.

Rock Valley College prevented Dominic Celletti from posting flyers on campus bulletin boards announcing a meeting to discuss civil rights issues. The college's attorney says the Constitution allows them to create a limited public forum for speech.

Rutherford Institute president John Whitehead disagrees with the school's stance.

"This is not a limited public forum - this is what's called viewpoint discrimination," the attorney tells OneNewsNow. "In other words, it's discriminating against a form of speech. The standard has been [that] you have to show a compelling interest, and I always wonder their compelling interest is ... they did not tell me when I originally wrote the school, but I never received any kind of response on that question."

Whitehead says his concern goes beyond this one particular free-speech case.

"I'm little concerned when the colleges and universities begin discriminating against certain kinds of speech," he offers. "If you allow that on any kind of speech, then I think in the end they're going to create a situation where most speech will be banned. That's why we're interested in the case."

Though Celletti met with college officials, he contacted the Rutherford Institute about a lawsuit after the administration showed no willingness to change the rules.