Students for Justice in Palestine Sue CU Boulder Over Being Punished for a Pro-Palestine Protest

It’s hard to imagine where the anti-war movements during the Vietnam War and the Iraq War would have been without the action taken on college campuses. College campuses have long been the focal point of such movements, and their input as free speech zones has been invaluable. What helps is that state-owned universities, such as CU, are considered “state actors” under the law and are, therefore, required to protect freedom of speech in ways that private companies are not. And so, as college campuses become the focal point of a pro-Palestine movement, we once again see freedom of speech rights coming under scrutiny, this time specifically in an incident at nearby CU Boulder that has led to a recent lawsuit against the school.

Photo from @boulder_sjp on Instagram

A pro-Palestine protest took place on October 3, 2024 during a job fair that promoted a number of military contractors including Lockheed Martin and RTX Corporation (formerly Raytheon Technologies), both of which have a long history of providing weapons to Israel. Seeing the opportunity to speak back to companies with ties to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the organization Students for Justice in Palestine held a peaceful demonstration on campus.

“We walked in there and left when the police officer told us to disperse,” explains Max Inman, one of the students involved in the protest. “We were probably in the room where the career fair was at for three to five minutes.”

Despite the fact that the protest was short-lived, peaceful, and followed the instructions of law enforcement, two of the students, Max Inman and Mari Rosenfeld, received notice the next day that they were barred from campus except to attend classes as an interim measure. This measure kept them from participating in additional protests on campus, and also got in the way of their on-campus jobs. “The administration would not give us a straight answer on how our working on-campus was affected,” explains Inman.

While the interim measure banning them from campus was lifted around Thanksgiving break, the subsequent lawsuit seeks to remove any disciplinary action from their records, as their student conduct cases are still pending. “So the complaint is seeking a number of different remedies,” explains Ashlyn Hare, associate attorney with the firm Hutchinson Black and Cook who are representing the students. “It’s for both monetary damages and injunctive relief. So the monetary damages are really for the two months that our clients were not able to protest on campus and had their first amendment rights restricted, and the injunctive relief is mainly seeking to get any of the disciplinary proceedings removed from their record, but also an injunction that would allow SJP and Our clients to continue protesting on campus, moving forward.”

In addition to arguing that the punishment violated the students’ First Amendment rights of free speech and their 14th Amendment right of due process, the lawsuit also argues that CU violated a rarely cited Colorado statute that declares that “student expression on the campuses of institutions of higher education is a vital component of the educational environment at these institutions of higher education and that promoting the free and unfettered exchange of ideas in this marketplace of ideas is one way in which these institutions of higher education fulfill their educational missions.”

“It’s an interesting statute that we had never seen before, and I’m not sure it’s really been utilized” says Hare regarding the statute. “I think it’s really intended to solidify the rights of students to protest on campus, just because college campuses have traditionally been a forum for defeat on public issues. So, I think it somewhat implies a heightened protection. If you really read through the statute, it seems just like a codification of First Amendment case law, but it really deeply solidified that this is something that’s important to the legislature, and something that’s really critical and at the center of First Amendment rights.”

The University of Colorado declined to comment on the case, saying that they have not been served.

For Inman and Rosenfeld, they stand behind their protest, and hope that the lawsuit allows for more people to speak out against the genocide in Gaza.

“CU rolls out the red carpet for arms manufacturers whose munitions are shipped to an apartheid state overseas?to slaughter innocent families,” says Rosenfeld in a statement released by her attorneys. “As students at CU Boulder, we have a duty to not stand idly by and act like that’s acceptable. Especially as a Jewish student at an?institution that claims to value diversity of perspectives, my voice deserves to be heard when speaking about how Israel’s actions dishonor the Jewish people. This lawsuit tells CU that they cannot repress this student movement for a Free Palestine.”

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