EDITORS' CORNER
Key Takeaways
- A federal judge ruled against Ohio State University for expelling a student over his anti-Israel TikTok videos, asserting that speech on public concerns cannot be suppressed even if offensive.
- The expelled student, Guy Christensen, was found to have not posed a significant risk to campus safety, which was a basis for his expulsion, according to the school's policies.
- The lawsuit highlighted two TikTok videos by Christensen, one addressing a shooting involving Israeli officials and another criticizing a congressman, which university officials deemed threatening.
A federal judge ruled against Ohio State University this month after the school expelled a student for posting anti-Israel videos on social media that administrators claimed encouraged violence.
The judge granted a preliminary injunction, directing the school to delete from the former student’s academic record any mention of his expulsion, according to court documents.
Speech addressing issues of public concern cannot be curtailed merely because it is offensive or provokes hostility, the judge ruled.
Guy Christensen “identifies himself as a strong supporter of the movement for Palestinian liberation and routinely posts videos of himself commenting on Palestinian rights and the Israel-Palestine conflict across a range of social media platforms, including TikTok, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, and Substack,” according to the ruling.
The lawsuit focuses on two TikTok videos the student posted on May 22, 2025, after he had left Ohio State’s campus for the summer.
In the first video, the student addressed a shooting in Washington, D.C., where two Israeli embassy employees were killed.
He initially condemned the attack but later retracted his condemnation, referring to the victims as “Zionist officials.” He also described the act as part of “resistance” and called for “escalation.”
In the second video, Christensen criticized Rep. Ritchie Torres for rejecting the claim that Israel’s actions in Gaza amount to genocide, accusing the congressman of enabling violence.
“So, shame on Ritchie. He is a Zionist scumbag. And I hope that the money he sleeps on at night stains his pajamas blood red,” Christensen said.
Rep. Torres viewed the post as a threat and notified the U.S. Capitol Police, the New York Post reported.
The student received a letter from school administrators on May 30 informing him of his expulsion, according to the ruling.
This letter stated that a student can be expelled “when the vice president for student life or designee finds that there is clear and convincing evidence that the student’s continued presence poses a significant risk of substantial harm to the health or safety of themselves, others, or to property.”
However, the school also informed Christensen that he could petition the vice president for student life to have his status reconsidered by submitting evidence showing that he “no longer pose[s] a significant risk of substantial harm to the safety of the university community.”
On June 23, 2025, Christensen filed a petition seeking re-enrollment at OSU, but university officials denied the petition, stating the student failed to provide evidence showing he no longer posed a substantial risk to campus safety.
Christensen filed a lawsuit against the school in September 2025, represented by the ACLU of Ohio. He alleged that the school violated his First Amendment right to free speech and Fourteenth Amendment right to due process.
As a result, U.S. District Judge Edmund Sargus ordered OSU to remove any reference to Christensen being “involuntarily disenrolled” from his academic record. The judge also prohibited the university from saying or showing anything similar in any records or communications, and required them to do so within 10 days of the order.
In a YouTube video following the ruling, Christensen said that “news outlets across Israel worked in coordination with pro-Israel outlets in the United States to smear [his] name and characterize [his] activism as violence.”
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