LA college district abolishes free speech zone as part of legal settlement

Kevin Shaw

Kevin Shaw, 27, a Pierce College student and a member of Young Americans for Liberty, filed a lawsuit against the Los Angeles Community College District after he was stopped from handing out what the school evidently views as an inflammatory, disgusting document--free copies of the U.S. Constitution.

The reason the school stopped him from his anti-left activity was because he wasn't in the campus' "free speech zone" which puts other students in danger of opinions that differ from their professors'.

School officials settled the lawsuit this week when they abandoned the use of the zones and allowed students to open their minds. The "free speech zone" measured 616 square feet, large enough to park three cars.
The actual free speech zone can be seen on the meme below.]

As a part of the settlement, the minuscule area marked for students to exercise their first amendment rights will be abandoned altogether, revoking a district-wide policy that declared all property on the district’s nine campuses to be “non-public forums” with speech restrictions. As part of the settlement, the LACCD will pay Shaw’s $225,000 in attorney fees.

It's so great to see a young man with guts. I love this guy, but the LACCD should be made to publicly apologize to every student for limiting their First Amendment rights--on both sides of the aisle--although I kind of doubt that leftist speech was curbed by the school district.

“Though it was not without its difficulties, this experience has left me optimistic about the guiding principles of my country,” said Shaw in a statement provided to Fox News. “Folks of all political dispositions rallied behind this case to declare in no uncertain terms: freedom of speech is essential to the educational process.”

Freedom of speech is essential to freedom altogether.

It was right before the general election in November 2016 when Shaw attempted to hand out Spanish-language copies of the Constitution during a recruiting drive for his student group,

A leftist school administrator told him he couldn't distribute literature outside the designated zone. Shaw said at the time he was also told that he would have to fill out a permit application to use the free speech zone and would be asked to leave campus if he refused to comply.

“When I attempted to hand out copies of the Constitution that day, my only intention was to get students thinking about our founding principles and to inspire discussion of liberty and free speech,” Shaw said in a statement to Fox News in early 2017. “I had no idea I would be called upon to defend those very ideals against Pierce’s unconstitutional campus policies.”

Shaw received help from advocacy organization, The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), and filed suit back in March 2017.

Last January a federal district court denied the district and Pierce College administrators’ motion to dismiss Shaw’s lawsuit, finding that the open spaces of public colleges are traditional public forums for student speech regardless of regulations.

“Hopefully, this settlement will serve as a reminder to both students and their colleges that the free and open exchange of ideas on campus is a precious commodity to be celebrated rather than feared or restricted,” said Arthur Willner, attorney, and co-counsel with FIRE in the case.

A spokesman for LACCD did not immediately respond to requests for comment although he had his First Amendment right to say whatever he wanted to say to the media without having to stand in a "free speech zone" to say it.

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