U. Illinois Settles Free Speech Lawsuit With Student Journalist Over Flap at Anti-Trump Protest
“f*ck Donald Trump and f*ck you guys”
How does this keep happening and no one stops it?
The College Fix reports:
University of Illinois resolves free speech lawsuit with student journalist
The University of Illinois has recently settled out of court with a student journalist who filed a lawsuit alleging that the implementation of a no-contact order against him was antithetical to the free press liberties enshrined in the First Amendment.
The lawsuit was filed earlier this year in response to events that transpired after an on-campus rally in November 2017 as members of the campus community held an anti-Trump rally.
Then-undergraduate students and members of the University of Illinois’ Turning Point USA chapter Blair Nelson, Joel Valdez and Andrew Minik attended in support of President Trump.
During the rally, PhD candidate and instructor Tariq Khan spoke and at one point shouted “f*ck Donald Trump and f*ck you guys.” Khan purportedly shouted that toward the student members of Turning Point USA. According to video of the incident, Khan also called them snowflakes and threatened to “tear down” one of their fliers.
Valdez replied “no one is scared of you, old man. Don’t you have kids to look after?” Khan ostensibly perceived this statement as a terroristic threat toward his family and confronted the students.
“Are you threatening my kids? …Threaten my kids again,” Khan said before grabbing Valdez’s cell phone and eventually throwing it to the ground, the video shows.
Khan was later arrested by university police and charged with criminal damage to property. Upon completion of a second-chance program, the charge was dismissed.
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Comments
This is bad. I was expecting to read the usual story, that the university settled and will no longer infringe the plaintiff’s rights. But this story is the opposite. The headline is misleading, because it’s the student who settled, not the uni. The student agreed to comply with the illegal no-contact order. The uni doesn’t seem to have given up anything.
I agree with you, Milhouse. The article’s title is misleading. One can only wonder as to the rationale for the title’s construction.
The settlement was with the university, https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/news-gazette.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/5/ab/5ab3f324-1e2f-11ea-bfc4-17832abf93d9/5df46de0d12e2.pdf.pdf I don’t see how the headline is misleading, but we will take a further look at it.
The settlement was indeed with the university, but the construction “Party A settles lawsuit” usually implies that Party A made a major concession and Party B came out a winner, if not as big a winner as it may have wanted to be. In this case it seems that it was the student who settled with the university, not the university with the student; in other words the student made the major concession and the university comes out a winner. In fact the student seems to have given the university everything it wanted, and the university seems to have given the student nothing.