The First Amendment prohibits selective removal of announcements from a state
college's campus bulletin boards, a federal appeals court has ruled.
In the case of Giebel v. Sylvester (Apr. 12, 2001), the United States
Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit concluded that a professor, Sylvester,
who had allegedly removed notices of the upcoming speech of another professor,
Giebel, may have violated Giebel's First Amendment rights. In an ironic twist,
Giebel had been scheduled to speak at a conference on intellectual freedom.
Professor Giebel's First Amendment claim apparently grew from a prior dispute
between the professors. In 1995, Giebel was denied a tenure-track position at
Montana State University-Northern. In an unsuccessful lawsuit, he accused
Sylvester, his former department head, of blocking his bid for the job. When
Giebel was invited back to campus in 1996 to give a speech at a conference about
intellectual freedom, he posted handbills announcing his speech around
