What Is the Price of Free Speech?

[Darkwind]

There was no silencing, but the attempt was made to. No other group at that University had to pay a fee to hold a debate. There are similar situations where a university refused to recognize a group for its views or otherwise discriminated against a group because of their viewpoints while other groups were unaffected. The case law is below.

Over 25 years ago, the Supreme Court handed down Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier, a case which gave public schools unbridled power to restrict the free speech of their students. However such a case only applied to high schoolers. But in 1972 the Supreme Court held in Healy v. James, 408 U.S. 169 (1972)a case where the Supreme Court established that a college or university could not refuse to recognize an organization simply because university officials had an unproven fear of school disruption; in this case Central Connecticut State College's refusal to recognize a chapter of Students for a Democratic Society violated the First Amendment. In the majority opinion, the court recognized the campus to be a "marketplace of ideas."

A year later in Papish v. Board of Curators of the University of Missouri 410 U.S. 667 (1973), Healy was upheld by the Supreme Court saying Healy made "clear that the mere dissemination of ideas - no matter how offensive to good taste - on a state university campus may not be shut off in the name alone of 'conventions of decency.'"

Almost 22 years later, the court handed down Rosenberger v. Rector of the University of Virginia 515 U.S. 819 (1995), where the University denied publication funding to a religious group, while handing the funding out to secular groups on campus. The court rejected the University's contention that funding a religious group would violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, holding that such policy violated the First Amendment altogether. In the opinion the court held:

In ancient Athens, and, as Europe entered into a new period of intellectual awakening, in places like Bologna, Oxford, and Paris, universities began as voluntary and spontaneous assemblages or concourses for students to speak and to write and to learn. The quality and creative power of student intellectual life to this day remains a vital measure of a school's influence and attainment. For the University, by regulation, to cast disapproval on particular viewpoints of its students risks the suppression of free speech and creative inquiry in one of the vital centers for the Nation's intellectual life, its college and university campuses.

So, to say that no violation of free speech occurred here would be inaccurate. Simply by discriminately charging student advocacy groups an inordinate fee for the right to hold a debate casts a chilling effect on the First Amendment rights of these students, regardless if the event went on as planned. Schools can only limit speech if it causes a reasonable disruption to it's image or operations.

This is why it is a violation of the Constitution.

They must have been taking lessons from the IRS....

 

[The T]

Interesting case.

But an observation:

It would be enormously beneficial to the credibility of the OP and other outraged nutters if one.....just one....of the cases you bring up did not involve a nutter or nutter group as plaintiff.

I bring up examples of the government oppressing moonbat groups all the time. That is because, unlike you, I believe everyone should enjoy the exact same liberties.

That sounds nice. Got an example?

KNOW the search function of these boards? USE IT.

 

[Pogo]

If they simply charged every single group the same fee you might be able to argue that the equal burden makes it legal, but it would still be wrong. The fact that the school charged one group based solely on the content of their debate, but didn't charge two other groups who wanted to do the same thing because their speech wasn't "offensive" makes you the one with a problem.

I don't have a "problem", incessant drama queen. I have logic.

Did the school -- or anyone -- prevent anyone from speaking? Did anyone who did speak get penalized for it?

No.

Therefore there's no speech right infringed. Nobody has a Constitutional right to use the Joseph. P. Wackoff Building for their debate. They have the right to the debate, not the building. Just as Phil Robertson has the right to his speech -- not the name of A&E.

How soon we forget...

Let's examine a similar situation: you might argue that requiring identification before someone can vote is a poll tax, even if every single voter were required to present ID to confirm they are who they claim to be, prior to casting their vote.
Requiring a fee be paid prior to making a public presentation has the same effect, that being the curtailment of freedom of expression (speech).

I don't think this analogy works, GW. If the debate can't afford to use the facility they can still hold the debate elsewhere. If the voter is required to have ID and doesn't, he or she can't just go do it somewhere else.

 

[Pogo]

If they simply charged every single group the same fee you might be able to argue that the equal burden makes it legal, but it would still be wrong. The fact that the school charged one group based solely on the content of their debate, but didn't charge two other groups who wanted to do the same thing because their speech wasn't "offensive" makes you the one with a problem.

I don't have a "problem", incessant drama queen. I have logic.

Did the school -- or anyone -- prevent anyone from speaking? Did anyone who did speak get penalized for it?

No.

Yes, in fact, they did: they had to cough up $650. Denying that makes you look INCREDIBLY stupid.

I didn't deny that at all. Matter of fact I said it looked discriminatory. Failing to be able to read that makes you look like an idiot.

 

[Pogo]

I bring up examples of the government oppressing moonbat groups all the time. That is because, unlike you, I believe everyone should enjoy the exact same liberties.

That sounds nice. Got an example?

KNOW the search function of these boards? USE IT.

It's not even your point, Einstein Further the burden of proof is on the claimant. DUH.

 

[TemplarKormac]

I don't have a "problem", incessant drama queen. I have logic.

Did the school -- or anyone -- prevent anyone from speaking? Did anyone who did speak get penalized for it?

No.

Therefore there's no speech right infringed. Nobody has a Constitutional right to use the Joseph. P. Wackoff Building for their debate. They have the right to the debate, not the building. Just as Phil Robertson has the right to his speech -- not the name of A&E.

How soon we forget...

Let's examine a similar situation: you might argue that requiring identification before someone can vote is a poll tax, even if every single voter were required to present ID to confirm they are who they claim to be, prior to casting their vote.
Requiring a fee be paid prior to making a public presentation has the same effect, that being the curtailment of freedom of expression (speech).

I don't think this analogy works, GW. If the debate can't afford to use the facility they can still hold the debate elsewhere. If the voter is required to have ID and doesn't, he or she can't just go do it somewhere else.

The analogy is unsound, I concur, BUT

The Supreme Court disagrees where debate and building usage is concerned, Pogo. You can't discriminately charge one group a fee for use of a facility while allowing free access to another. The campus is what is known by the courts as a "forum for student expression." In Lamb's Chapel v. Center Moriches Union Free School District, 508 U.S. 384 (1993) which is similar in scope to this case, the Court ruled that excluding the religious organization from school installations, whilst simultaneously permitting secular groups’ use of the same place for a "wide variety of social, civic, and recreational purposes", constituted viewpoint discrimination that violated the First Amendment. Meaning, Pogo, the building should be free for use by any group regardless of religious or political viewpoints.

A lot of colleges in America receive government funding or grants for their operations, meaning they can't simply do what they want footloose and fancy free. Since government has a vested interest in the school's operations and funding, they are (or should be) bound by the Constitution.

 

[The T]

Let's examine a similar situation: you might argue that requiring identification before someone can vote is a poll tax, even if every single voter were required to present ID to confirm they are who they claim to be, prior to casting their vote.
Requiring a fee be paid prior to making a public presentation has the same effect, that being the curtailment of freedom of expression (speech).

I don't think this analogy works, GW. If the debate can't afford to use the facility they can still hold the debate elsewhere. If the voter is required to have ID and doesn't, he or she can't just go do it somewhere else.

The analogy is unsound, I concur, BUT

The Supreme Court disagrees where debate and building usage is concerned, Pogo. You can't discriminately charge one group a fee for use of a facility while allowing free access to another. The campus is what is known by the courts as a "forum for student expression." In Lamb's Chapel v. Center Moriches Union Free School District, 508 U.S. 384 (1993) which is similar in scope to this case, the Court ruled that excluding the religious organization from school installations, whilst simultaneously permitting secular groups’ use of the same place for a "wide variety of social, civic, and recreational purposes", constituted viewpoint discrimination that violated the First Amendment. Meaning, Pogo, the building should be free for use by any group regardless of religious or political viewpoints.

A lot of colleges in America receive government funding or grants for their operations, meaning they can't simply do what they want footloose and fancy free. Since government has a vested interest in the school's operations and funding, they are (or should be) bound by the Constitution.

LAW should be equally applied to all...in this case? NOT so much.

 

[The T]

That sounds nice. Got an example?

KNOW the search function of these boards? USE IT.

It's not even your point, Einstein Further the burden of proof is on the claimant. DUH.

WAS the point dipstick.

 

[Pogo]

Let's examine a similar situation: you might argue that requiring identification before someone can vote is a poll tax, even if every single voter were required to present ID to confirm they are who they claim to be, prior to casting their vote.
Requiring a fee be paid prior to making a public presentation has the same effect, that being the curtailment of freedom of expression (speech).

I don't think this analogy works, GW. If the debate can't afford to use the facility they can still hold the debate elsewhere. If the voter is required to have ID and doesn't, he or she can't just go do it somewhere else.

The analogy is unsound, I concur, BUT

The Supreme Court disagrees where debate and building usage is concerned, Pogo. You can't discriminately charge one group a fee for use of a facility while allowing free access to another. The campus is what is known by the courts as a "forum for student expression." In Lamb's Chapel v. Center Moriches Union Free School District, 508 U.S. 384 (1993) which is similar in scope to this case, the Court ruled that excluding the religious organization from school installations, whilst simultaneously permitting secular groups’ use of the same place for a "wide variety of social, civic, and recreational purposes", constituted viewpoint discrimination that violated the First Amendment. Meaning, Pogo, the building should be free for use by any group regardless of religious or political viewpoints.

A lot of colleges in America receive government funding or grants for their operations, meaning they can't simply do what they want footloose and fancy free. Since government has a vested interest in the school's operations and funding, they are (or should be) bound by the Constitution.

I already said it looks like discrimination and as such unfair. But you can't say the university restricted speech when what they restricted was a facility. There was nothing about that debate that could be expressed only in that facility. Unless someone can make the point that the facility has magical powers without which someone cannot speak.

So again as we've already established, there's a question to be resolved on the setting of those fees as to whether one group was discriminated against with them. OTOH the university's policy provides that they do charge something for the overhead of that facility. As long as we accept that some charge is legitimate, then we can argue setting one fee here and another there is discriminatory. But we can't argue that fee squelches speech, because it doesn't.

 

[NYcarbineer]

There was no silencing, but the attempt was made to. No other group at that University had to pay a fee to hold a debate.

There was disruption at UB 3 days before the debate. It centered around the Students for Life having brought in an extremist anti-abortion group that travels around setting up displays that compare abortion to genocide, the Holocaust, etc.

That incited a large protest.

You might do well to occasionally spend 10 minutes researching the facts as opposed to simply plucking assumptions out of the thin air.

 

[Pogo]

KNOW the search function of these boards? USE IT.

It's not even your point, Einstein Further the burden of proof is on the claimant. DUH.

WAS the point dipstick.

Try minding your own business, dipstick.

 

[Mac1958]

.

To answer the question posed in the OP, I'd say the price of Free Speech is very high.

A person has to have the self-confidence, humility and maturity to allow others to voice their opinions without feeling the need to shout them down, threaten them or punish them in some way. They have to be at peace with themselves and with others. That requires a certain inner strength.

Clearly, many people don't have that strength.

.

 

[NYcarbineer]

There was no silencing, but the attempt was made to. No other group at that University had to pay a fee to hold a debate. There are similar situations where a university refused to recognize a group for its views or otherwise discriminated against a group because of their viewpoints while other groups were unaffected. The case law is below.

Over 25 years ago, the Supreme Court handed down Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier 484 U.S. 260 (1988), a case which gave public schools unbridled power to restrict the free speech of their students. However such a case only applied to high schoolers. But 16 years before, the Supreme Court held in Healy v. James, 408 U.S. 169 (1972); that a college or university could not refuse to recognize an organization simply because university officials had an unproven fear of school disruption. In this case Central Connecticut State College's refusal to recognize a chapter of Students for a Democratic Society violated the First Amendment. In the majority opinion, the court recognized the campus to be a "marketplace of ideas."

A year later in Papish v. Board of Curators of the University of Missouri 410 U.S. 667 (1973), Healy was upheld by the Supreme Court saying Healy made "clear that the mere dissemination of ideas - no matter how offensive to good taste - on a state university campus may not be shut off in the name alone of 'conventions of decency.'"

Almost 22 years later, the court handed down Rosenberger v. Rector of the University of Virginia 515 U.S. 819 (1995), where the University denied publication funding to a religious group, while handing the funding out to secular groups on campus. The court rejected the University's contention that funding a religious group would violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, holding that such policy violated the First Amendment altogether. In the opinion the court held:

In ancient Athens, and, as Europe entered into a new period of intellectual awakening, in places like Bologna, Oxford, and Paris, universities began as voluntary and spontaneous assemblages or concourses for students to speak and to write and to learn. The quality and creative power of student intellectual life to this day remains a vital measure of a school's influence and attainment. For the University, by regulation, to cast disapproval on particular viewpoints of its students risks the suppression of free speech and creative inquiry in one of the vital centers for the Nation's intellectual life, its college and university campuses.

So, to say that no violation of free speech occurred here would be inaccurate. Simply by discriminately charging student advocacy groups an inordinate fee for the right to hold a debate casts a chilling effect on the First Amendment rights of these students, regardless if the event went on as planned. Schools can only limit speech if it causes a reasonable disruption to it's image or operations.

Since it was a debate, which at least theoretically, means that both sides of an issue would receive equal time/opportunity to present their side of the issue,

it cannot be established or even assumed that the University was acting for the purpose of suppressing the anti-abortion view.

The university has to be allowed discretion in determining security needs for any event on campus.

 

[The T]

.

To answer the question posed in the OP, I'd say the price of Free Speech is very high.

A person has to have the self-confidence, humility and maturity to allow others to voice their opinions without feeling the need to shout them down, threaten them or punish them in some way. They have to be at peace with themselves and with others. That requires a certain inner strength.

Clearly, many people don't have that strength.

.

And needs defending regardless of whom is speaking. The Founders were very clear and the reason the First Amendment was crafted as assurance speech was applied equally to ALL citizens, and NOT just the elite. What they shed blood for.

 

[The T]

It's not even your point, Einstein Further the burden of proof is on the claimant. DUH.

WAS the point dipstick.

Try minding your own business, dipstick.

Really?

BITE ME MORON.

 

[Mac1958]

Back atcha!

.

.

To answer the question posed in the OP, I'd say the price of Free Speech is very high.

A person has to have the self-confidence, humility and maturity to allow others to voice their opinions without feeling the need to shout them down, threaten them or punish them in some way. They have to be at peace with themselves and with others. That requires a certain inner strength.

Clearly, many people don't have that strength.

.

And needs defending regardless of whom is speaking. The Founders were very clear and the reason the First Amendment was crafted as assurance speech was applied equally to ALL citizens, and NOT just the elite. What they shed blood for.

 

[The T]

Back atcha!

.

.

To answer the question posed in the OP, I'd say the price of Free Speech is very high.

A person has to have the self-confidence, humility and maturity to allow others to voice their opinions without feeling the need to shout them down, threaten them or punish them in some way. They have to be at peace with themselves and with others. That requires a certain inner strength.

Clearly, many people don't have that strength.

.

And needs defending regardless of whom is speaking. The Founders were very clear and the reason the First Amendment was crafted as assurance speech was applied equally to ALL citizens, and NOT just the elite. What they shed blood for.

Clearly far too many don't understand the premise...You and I, the OP and a few others do...I see too many introducing GREY AREAS into this.

LIBERTY is an all or nothing proposition as long as no other person and their liberty is being infringed. Founders were clear. University of Buffalo is inherently WRONG as the OP suggests.

Or have Universities turned into Dictatorships that don't have to adhere to the Constitution?

 

[Cecilie1200]

The university was definetly in the wrong, and should return the money they charged the group. But this not a constitutional issue.

Then why the lawsuit? Is the University not bound by the law?

The university should be charged with discriminating against the group. But the group holding the debate was not charged with a crime for what they did, so it's not a freedom of speech issue.

Sorry, Sparky, but the Constitution doesn't require that they be charged with a crime. The First Amendment only requires that the government - and I believe the University of Buffalo is a state school - abridge the freedom of speech, which I would say charging unwarranted fees not charged to any other group certainly qualifies as. And yes, I'm aware that the text of the Constitution specifies "Congress", but subsequent laws have applied those strictures to lesser government entities, so don't even bother with that.

Furthermore, the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution specifies that "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States . . . nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." Charging fees to this group which are not charged to any other group certainly is not "equal".

 

[TemplarKormac]

I don't think this analogy works, GW. If the debate can't afford to use the facility they can still hold the debate elsewhere. If the voter is required to have ID and doesn't, he or she can't just go do it somewhere else.

The analogy is unsound, I concur, BUT

The Supreme Court disagrees where debate and building usage is concerned, Pogo. You can't discriminately charge one group a fee for use of a facility while allowing free access to another. The campus is what is known by the courts as a "forum for student expression." In Lamb's Chapel v. Center Moriches Union Free School District, 508 U.S. 384 (1993) which is similar in scope to this case, the Court ruled that excluding the religious organization from school installations, whilst simultaneously permitting secular groups’ use of the same place for a "wide variety of social, civic, and recreational purposes", constituted viewpoint discrimination that violated the First Amendment. Meaning, Pogo, the building should be free for use by any group regardless of religious or political viewpoints.

A lot of colleges in America receive government funding or grants for their operations, meaning they can't simply do what they want footloose and fancy free. Since government has a vested interest in the school's operations and funding, they are (or should be) bound by the Constitution.

I already said it looks like discrimination and as such unfair. But you can't say the university restricted speech when what they restricted was a facility. There was nothing about that debate that could be expressed only in that facility. Unless someone can make the point that the facility has magical powers without which someone cannot speak.

So again as we've already established, there's a question to be resolved on the setting of those fees as to whether one group was discriminated against with them. OTOH the university's policy provides that they do charge something for the overhead of that facility. As long as we accept that some charge is legitimate, then we can argue setting one fee here and another there is discriminatory. But we can't argue that fee squelches speech, because it doesn't.

I disagree. When you limit access to a building, then charge a fee to those who wish to use it in a manner similar to this pro life group, while allowing free access to another, you may not be "squelching" anything, you are limiting the places where they can express their speech. In other words you are committing viewpoint discrimination, which has free speech applications. Merely limiting their options and venues in which to express their speech can be seen as a violation of the First Amendment. Restricting the venue in turn can restrict speech. You cannot designate a place for someone to express their speech, Pogo, that not only violates their free speech, it violates freedom of assembly. Limitation leads to elimination. In other words, what is and are limitations now, can set the precedent for elimination later.

The university isn't allowed to determine what form of speech is preferable over another when such speech isn't a disruptive influence to the school and it operations. It's that simple. The fee spoken of here is illegitimate. The school (so far as I know) had no preexisting basis for establishing the implementation of this kind of fee. Logic dictates that if such a fee were already established for all groups school wide when it was levied against this group, the school would have further legal standing to apply it to other groups on campus. But since no other known instance of this has been known to have occurred, this is a clear violation of the 1st Amendment, freedom of assembly, and to a certain extent, a breach of the Civil Right Act of 1964.

 

[Cecilie1200]

Interesting case.

But an observation:

It would be enormously beneficial to the credibility of the OP and other outraged nutters if one.....just one....of the cases you bring up did not involve a nutter or nutter group as plaintiff.

So basically, it's only "credible" in your eyes if we bring up some leftist group you approve of who's being persecuted by conservatives. And since that doesn't happen, all is right with the world. No need to worry if the only people being denied their rights are people YOU don't agree with, and who therefore didn't deserve to have them, anyway.

Is that about the size of it?