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‘UCLA Law students have not been given unequivocal assurance that UCLA will not punish them for identifying students who disrupted their event,’ FIRE attorney says
An assistant dean at the UCLA School of Law walked back comments this week suggesting Federalist Society students could be punished for publicly identifying protesters who disrupted their event earlier this month, according to emails obtained by The College Fix.
However, an attorney with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression described the university’s response as “unacceptable” and said the situation remains unresolved.
“UCLA Law students have not been given unequivocal assurance that UCLA will not punish them for identifying students who disrupted their event, and as a public institution bound by the First Amendment, UCLA’s response is unacceptable,” FIRE attorney Jessie Appleby told The College Fix in an email Friday.
Meanwhile, retired UCLA Law Professor Eugene Volokh characterized the dean’s initial response to the student group as subtly threatening and the subsequent correspondence as not a true apology.
Volokh told The College Fix that concerns about doxing frequently get mentioned in such situations.
But unless someone is being identified in an “expressly” threatening way or in a manner that “solicits a crime against them,” it isn’t wrong to identify them publicly for doing something wrong, he said in a phone interview Friday.
Of course, if the dean had simply given advice to the students about why he thought it wasn’t a good idea to identify the protesters, that would have been legitimate, he said.
“Whether intentionally or not,” the assistant dean’s original email “was essentially an improper, subtle threat of retaliation for constitutionally protected speech,” Volokh said.
The overall situation revolves around protesters who were caught on video earlier this month hurling insults and making disruptive noises during a UCLA Federalist Society event with U.S. Department of Homeland Security General Counsel James Percival.
Afterward, student leaders of the conservative legal group reported receiving an email from Assistant Dean for Student Affairs Bayrex Martí warning them that they could be punished for publicly identifying protesters.
That email prompted a letter from FIRE, which, in turn, prompted a statement from the university apologizing for “any lack of clarity” and affirming the students’ free speech rights.
A spokesperson for the university didn’t respond to The Fix’s email Friday asking for an update on the situation and its response to FIRE.
Emails between Assistant Dean Martí and Federalist Society President Matthew Weinberg this week, which were shared with The College Fix, reveal more.
“I was not saying that in this situation you sharing the names of students who attended the event is prohibited by the UCLA Student Conduct Code,” Marti wrote Wednesday, adding, “I only meant to flag that if those students were later targeted or subjected to misconduct, they might respond to that conduct.”
“But I wasn’t suggesting that protected speech should be restricted because of how others might react. I am sorry that I did not convey this clearly,” he wrote.
Martí also wrote that administrators are investigating the event to determine potential policy violations.
Responding that same day, Weinberg asked the dean what would happen if he “hypothetically” identified a student protester online and that student then filed a complaint.
“[W]ould an investigation be opened? Or would the school close the complaint without action on the basis that the speech is protected?” Weinberg wrote.
On Thursday, Marti responded by re-emphasizing the university’s dedication to freedom of speech and inviting the student to meet with him in-person to discuss the situation in more detail.
“Any hypothetical situation involving unprotected behavior that violates UCLA policies would need to be addressed on a case-by-case basis if and when it occurs, in accordance with the applicable conduct and university policies before any decision is reached or action is taken,” Marti wrote.
However, this answer still left Federalist Society students feeling uncertain about whether they could potentially face consequences for outing the protesters, according to information shared with The Fix.
For some constitutional scholars, the situation – coupled with others like it on campuses across the country in recent years – also raises broader concerns.
“This is a pattern. Whenever there’s a protest, the school always defends those who misbehave and tries to silence those who are” exercising their constitutional rights, Professor Josh Blackman, a constitutional scholar at the South Texas College of Law, told The Fix on Friday in a phone interview Friday.
He said he found it “remarkable” that UCLA’s dean did not apologize to the Federalist Society students for how it handled the disruptors.
When asked about potential consequences for law students who violate others’ free speech, Blackman expressed frustration that more has not been done to hold future professionals accountable.
“Lawyers play an important role in society, and we expect greater of them,” he said.
“Whenever a law student wants to graduate and sit for a bar exam, they have to submit what’s called a character and fitness application … to show that you’re of sufficiently good character and fitness to be an attorney. There’ve been rumblings for years that bars would start scrutinizing those who disrupt speech, and frankly nothing’s happened,” Blackman said.
From Professor Volokh’s point of view, such situations could be avoided in the future if universities themselves were more open to hosting speakers with a wide variety of perspectives.
“One of the messages that comes out from events like this is it’s dangerous for student groups to try to bring somebody in,” Volokh told The Fix.
A renowned First Amendment scholar, he said student groups have security matters and professional consequences for their own futures to consider when hosting controversial speakers.
If instead administrators take it upon themselves to facilitate diverse viewpoints, “the administration would have more incentive to actually punish people who do indeed disrupt it,” he told The Fix.
“And on top of that, I think people are going to be a little bit less likely to disrupt an event that has the administration’s imprimatur,” Volokh said.
MORE: Free speech group slams UCLA for ‘double standards’ after hecklers disrupt event
