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 the campus. Giebel claims that former colleagues told him that Sylvester admitted at a department meeting that he had torn the notices down. Giebel then brought another lawsuit alleging that Sylvester had violated his First Amendment rights.
The trial court refused to dismiss the claims against Sylvester without a trial. Sylvester had argued that, even if he did tear down the handbills, his conduct did not violate the First Amendment because the handbills were not protected speech and because the university had provided another forum - the conference - for Giebel to present his ideas. The trial court rejected both arguments, and the Ninth Circuit affirmed the trial court's determination that Sylvester was not entitled to these defenses.
The Ninth Circuit held that Giebel's handbills constituted speech entitled to First Amendment protection even though they were "merely informative" and did not "convey a position on the subject matter." The Ninth Circuit also held that the university's bulletin boards constituted a public forum to which Giebel was entitled to access. The court found it irrelevant for its analysis that Giebel was also being given a chance to speak at the conference.
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