This photo shows Mary Beth Tinker and Isaac Smith.
Mary Beth sued her school district when she was sent home for
wearing a black armband to protest the Vietnam War.
That act of pushing back resulted in the landmark decision
Tinker v Des Moines Independent School District.
In which the Supreme Court stated neither students nor teachers shed their
constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the school house gate.
Isaac Smith sued Ohio University in July 2014 to force the University
to reform a vague policy that forbade any act that degrades,
demeans, or disgraces another student.
He feared that broad policy would be used to punish him and
other members of his group, Students Defending Students, for
wearing an off color t-shirt with the slogan We Get You Off For Free.
The two of them are part of a noble tradition of people standing up to assert
their right to express themselves.
A tradition that is coming increasingly under fire on college and
university campuses.
That photograph captures the spirit of Fire's Stand Up For
Speech litigation project.
Stand Up For Speech Exists to support any student or
faculty member who wants to join Mary Beth Tinker, Isaac Smith, and
countless others in the fight for free expression.
If your expressive rights have been violated on a college or
university campus.
And you want to fight back in court, Fire is waiting to help.
My job is to sift through the numerous inquires Fire gets.
And figure out which might be best resolved through litigation.
Just is a word I hear a lot.
As in I just wanted to hand out flyers, but I was told I could only do so
in a tiny free speech zone.
Or I just wanted to collect signatures for a petition.
Or I just wanted to recruit members for my student group.
When students first contact us, they're often apologetic.
As if they were the ones being unreasonable for
objecting to being censored.
But big principles often hide in small incidents.
After all,
Rosa Parks just wanted to keep a seat on the bus after a long day at work.
Stand up for speech targets, public universities,
because they are bound by the First Amendment.
Most people don't think of universities as the government, like the police or
legislature, or DMV.
But university administrators are public officials and
their schools are funded by taxpayer dollars.
That means that the college administrator tells a student he or
she needs special permission or a permit to speak.
It's censorship, and the First Amendment exists to make sure that doesn't happen.
Stand Up For Speech works simply.
If someone wants to challenge their school's unconstitutional speech policies.
And we agree that there's a clear cut violation of the First Amendment rights.
We refer the case to an outside law firm.
Then we work with the lawyers and the plaintiff to reform the policies.
The project has a straightforward but ambitious goal.
To change the risk calculation of university administrators.
So that the costs of violating the First Amendment are greater than the so
called benefits of keeping controversy off campus.
But Stand Up For Speech doesn't work without plaintiffs.
For instance, plaintiffs like Erin Furleigh and
Paul Gerlich, who sued Iowa State University for
censoring their efforts to advocate for marijuana legalization.
Including forbidding them to include an image of a cannabis leaf on
a t-shirt design.
In short, students who, to quote Aaron, believe in standing up for what is right,
even when, especially when you are told to sit down.
Stand Up For Speech has sponsored ten lawsuits in a little over a year.
And we will keep doing so until college and university administrators let
rough and tumble intellectual debate take place without restriction.
In other words, until they let the school fulfill its mission.