Mauck
Baker,
LLC
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE January 22, 2015
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Judge orders halt to free speech suppression at Waubonsee Community College
(Chicago, Illinois—January 22, 2015) Today U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman rebuked Waubonsee Community College for engaging in “purposeful unconstitutional suppression of speech” when it denied the request of activists Wayne Lela and John McCartney to hand out fliers on its Sugar Grove campus in 2014. In granting Lela and McCartney a preliminary injunction, Judge Gettleman wrote, “provocative speech is entitled to the same protection as speech promoting popular notions.” Judge Gettleman, as an attorney, successfully defended the Nazis right to march in their landmark free speech case against the Village of Skokie. As members of the organization Heterosexuals Organized for a Moral Environment (H.O.M.E.), Lela and McCartney regularly hand out fliers on college campuses to raise awareness of the moral and health dangers of homosexual intercourse. Though Lela and McCartney frequent many schools and were previously allowed on the Sugar Grove Campus, Waubonsee denied their request to return to campus in 2014—prompting the lawsuit. In court, Waubonsee’s attorneys argued that it was entitled to keep the fliers off campus, because the college considered them “inflammatory,” “discriminatory,” “disparaging commentary,” “antihomosexual,” and “demeaning.” Waubonsee repeatedly denied the existence of a “free speech zone” on campus and called the idea that “the college is bound to let the opposite viewpoint [on homosexuality] be presented… absurd.” The college also claimed that one of its job is to protect the “Nation’s youth” from the type of information Lela and McCartney seek to share. Waubonsee went so far as to ban H.O.M.E.’s purely informational fliers under its “Solicitation Policy,” because, according to the college’s Director of Emergency Management and Safety, “solicitation” includes any “active attempt to influence student thinking.” Judge Gettleman’s order went on to state, “if the court were to accept the definition of solicitation offered by [Waubonsee]—nearly any type of speech could be considered solicitation, and therefore barred by [Waubonsee].” Lela and McCartney will now proceed with the rest of their case and seek attorneys’ fees against Waubonsee Community College. “Colleges in America should not be in the business of protecting their students from ideas and suppressing speech,” said Lela and McCartney’s attorney Whitman Brisky of Mauck & Baker, LLC and for the Rutherford Institute. “We need more cases and judicial decisions like this to beat back the increasing levels of censorship on our college campuses.” View the complaint and memorandum opinion and order.
For press inquiries, contact Rutherford Institute, Media Coordinator Nisha Whitehead at nisha@rutherford.org .