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| PBSC YAF tabling during one of their 5 days per month |
That's the result for the Palm Beach State chapter of the Young Americans for Freedom, who were granted a temporary injunction in their confrontation with the school over their rights to talk to others and recruit.
According to the Alliance Defense Fund, which is representing the students, the school has agreed to a court injunction that will allow two students to "disseminate leaflets and/or converse with the general public."
The injunction allows the group to give out literature four or five days each month while the full lawsuit is litigated. The injunction agreement also requires theschoolto do a full campus club policy review.
The YAF chapter filed the suit in November in response to a decision by campus authorities to escort two YAF members off campus for giving out a Heritage Foundation policy paper analyzing the impact of Barack Obama's stimulus bills.
The students said the school gave them permission to hand out the policy papers.
ADF attorney Casey Mattox is representing the YAF chapter and said the organization wants student groups to have their First Amendment rights.
"What YAF is pushing for is the ability to protect the First Amendment rights of not only the YAF, but for every student group whether they're on the conservative side or any other side. YAF is trying to protect the First Amendment rights of all students," Mattox said.
Mattox says there is a higher objective.
"The ultimate goal here is that the First Amendment will be respected at Palm Beach State. The First Amendment knows no ideology and so YAF certainly wants to make sure that not only YAF but groups that they disagree with are able to engage in debate on campus," Mattox said.
Mattox described Palm Beach State's policies as one of the most restrictive in the country.
"Palm Beach State has perhaps some of the worst speech policies of just about anyschoolin the country," Mattox said.
Mattox uses the school's rules regarding club activities as the example.
"Palm Beach State completely prohibits students from distributing any literature of any kind on campus. We have an injunction here now that requires them to at least allow YAF to distribute literature at few days a month," Mattox explained.
He said the regulations even attempt the difficult task of controlling a student organization's off-campus activities.
"It would certainly be difficult, but in fact the way the policy reads, it would seem to actually regulate them even if they were getting together as a student group at a social event to have pizza," Mattox said.
"They require them, any time that students are meeting, or any event that is off campus, they require them to get permission, at least a week or two weeks in advance of the scheduled activity," Mattox said.
The policy even includes a club's recreational activities.
"If you are going bowling with a group of students, if the YAF group was going bowling, they would have to get permission a couple of weeks in advance from the administration to do that," Mattox said.
Palm Beach State College spokeswoman Grace Truman says the college is not responding to questions because the litigation is still ongoing.
But Mattox also said the school has had some noticeable lapses in enforcing its policy.
"They're not even following their own policy at Palm Beach State. Their own policies say that if you want to distribute literature on campus, you have to request permission 48 hours in advance and they have the authority to permit you or not permit you to distribute literature, which is a problem on its own right,"
He said in practice, when the students went in to say they wanted to distribute literature, the administration responded, "Well we just don't allow that at all."
"At the same time … I know there was a blood drive on campus, and they were distributing literature to promote the blood drive. So certainly the school looks the other way to certain groups, but they would not look the other way when it came to YAF," Mattox said.
"For some they have permitted literature distribution and the university was well aware of it. But for YAF they were not willing to change and they strictly adhered to their 'No literature on campus' policy," Mattox said.
Now that an injunction is being implemented, and the school has promised a policy review, Mattox said the next step would be to expand the application of the First Amendment.
"We're waiting to find out if they're really going to come up with policies by the first of March that will in fact respect the First Amendment rights of all students on campus," he said.
"I'm certainly hopeful. This is a situation where the university's policies are so egregiously bad that you hope they immediately recognize the need to fix them. But we'll see. If they don't we'll certainly continue to litigate and make sure we ask the court to do what it has to do to protect the First Amendment right of the students," Mattox said.
WND reported earlier when Student Activities Administrator Olivia Ford-Morris "was visibly disturbed" by literature being distributed by YAF.
Read more:'Young Americans' given free speech 5 days/monthhttp://www.wnd.com/?pageId=253413#ixzz1Hxd9S3DM
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