Ross Abbott, a fourth-year business economics student, along with the campus chapters of Young Americans for Liberty and College Libertarians and assisted by Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, filed a First Amendment lawsuit against USC Tuesday.
"The University of South Carolina is so intolerant of free speech that students can’t even talk about free speech,” Catherine Sevcenko, FIRE’s associate director of litigation, said.
Students filed formal complaints last semester after the student groups held an outdoor event featuring posters with examples of censorship throughout the nation. This lead to the launch of an investigation and the university serving Abbott a Notice of Charge letter, demanding he respond to the complaints by meeting with the Office of Equal Opportunity Programs and threatening to expel him, according to FIRE. Abbott had the posters approved by the campus director of student life before the event.
“I held an educational event for students to learn about their free speech rights. Apparently it was my school’s administrators that needed the lesson,” Abbott said. “Now, with FIRE’s help, we’re going to give it to them.”
The Nov. 23 event conveyed 11 instances of campus censorship nationwide, including a student being prevented from handing out copies of the U.S. Constitution, a faculty blog being censored and the suspension of a Jewish student for displaying a souvenir Hindu swastika obtained on a trip to India on a residence hall bulletin board. Three USC students that filed complaints found the event "offensive" and "triggering."
Carl Wells, assistant director of the Office of Equal Opportunity Programs and a defendant in the lawsuit, required Abbott at a Dec. 8 meeting to explain each situation depicted by the posters and what message they were supposed to be sending, according to FIRE. Abbott, in turn, gave Wells a letter asking that his disciplinary record be expunged. Abbott was notified through email that the matter was being dropped; however, Abbott and the student groups chose to go through with the lawsuit in order to ensure that in the future students will not be punished for protected speech.
This lawsuit will challenge USC's free speech zone policy and the Student Non-Discrimination and Non-Harassment Policy.
The Daily Gamecock has reached out to the Office of Equal Opportunity Programs for comment, and there has been no response at this time.