Yuba Community College District in California faces a federal lawsuit over restricting a student's free speech.
Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) Center for Academic Freedom attorney David Hacker represents student Ryan Dozier, who distributed tracts on campus and talked about Christianity to students one day after class. "Soon after he started doing that, though, the college administrators came out along with one of the police officers for the Yuba Community College district, and they approached him and basically said he needed a permit to be out there," Hacker says. Another ADF litigation staff member contends when authorities can threaten a student with citation and expulsion for calmly sharing the gospel, that college can no longer be considered "a marketplace for ideas." Campus policy stipulates that students obtain a permit 14 days in advance to exercise free-speech activities. Free speech is also limited to Tuesdays and Thursdays from 12:00 to 1:00 p.m. at Yuba Community College. "And then the administration is given total discretion to decide where those students can stand on campus or where they can speak on campus -- so it's really an onerous speech policy," Hacker adds. Hacker is asking for a temporary order reinstating Dozier's constitutional rights until the lawsuit is heard. He claims that 70 percent of America's colleges and universities have on-campus speech policies that violate the First Amendment by censoring free speech.
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