UC Berkeley must pay $70K and change policies to guarantee free speech for conservative speakers

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.

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.

Further, the policy that allowed Berkeley administrators to charge conservative students $20,000 for security to host Ben Shapiro – an amount three times greater than the fee charged to leftist students to host liberal Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor – is gone.  YAF and UC Berkeley agreed to a fee schedule that treats all students equally.  Unless students are handling money or serving alcohol at an event, the security fee will be zero.

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