The University of New Mexico (UNM) faces a lawsuit in federal court over the unfair and substantial security fee it charged for an event organized by conservative students.
Via Fox News:
“The Southeastern Legal Foundation (SLF) filed a federal lawsuit against UNM for attempting to charge students over $5,000 in security fees for hosting women’s sports activist and former NCAA swimmer Riley Gaines as a speaker. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of the Turning Point USA chapter at the university and the Leadership Institute, an organization that supports conservative student organizations with event planning.
…
SLF sent UNM a letter before the event warning them that imposing security fees or costs based on an assumption of how people would react to a person’s speech violates the First Amendment.
They added that making such judgments on speakers’ viewpoints is “never constitutional.” According to the complaint, SLF argued that UNM officials “engaged in viewpoint and content discrimination when they required Plaintiffs to bear the cost of security based on the officials’ subjective assessment of the crowd’s potential reaction to Ms. Gaines’ speech.”
However, UNM billed the Leadership Institute and the TPUSA campus group $5,384 to cover the security fees despite the letter.
“The invoice showed that twenty-seven officers were on-site, with several officers roaming and even an ‘arrest team’ standing by, even though the event was peaceful and only a few protestors showed up holding signs. UNM also admitted that the university consistently applies higher fees to Turning Point USA events,” SLF said in a statement.”
This lawsuit should just be the first of a combined assault on the bias against conservatives and conservative thinking on college campuses, especially at public school.
If taxpayer dollars are helping to support the school the administration and staff must either be strictly politically neutral or they should lose their funding.
Free speech and the right to bear arms are the twin bedrocks of a free society and those that threaten either should be sued into oblivion if they do not change their ways.
