The California State University system and Cal State San Marcos agreed to pay $240,000 to settle a lawsuit challenging their refusal to use student fees to fund a pro-life speaker on campus, according to a newspaper report Wednesday.
University officials also agreed to change their policy to make sure that future funding decisions are “viewpoint neutral” and do not discriminate against particular causes, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported.
Cal State San Marcos student Nathan Apodaca sued the school and its Associated Students Inc. auxiliary in 2017 after he and his anti-abortion group Students for Life were denied a $500 grant to host Mike Adams, a well-known pro-life speaker.
As part of the settlement, all 23 Cal State campuses will be alerted that applicable student association funds for speech events “may not be based on the approval or disapproval of an organization’s or an association’s viewpoint.”
The agreement, which assigns no blame to either party in the litigation, also calls for CSU to pay $3,000 in damages to the Students for Life chapter at CSU San Marcos. Associated Students agreed to pay $300 to Apodaca to cover past fees paid by the student.
In a statement, the CSU Office of the Chancellor and CSUSM said they “embrace the notion that universities must be a marketplace of ideas,” adding that the court found “no evidence” that the campus “intentionally engaged in viewpoint discrimination.”
“However, the court did find that the funding process used by the Associated Students group was not adequately identified and documented,” said the statement. “Therefore, the court ruled that the Associated Students’ commitment not to discriminate on the basis of an organization’s viewpoints had to be clearer and expressly set out in writing in its governing regulations and rules.”
The university said the process was a “collaborative effort, by both sides, to strengthen viewpoint neutrality at this very diverse campus.”
Alliance Defending Freedom, which filed the lawsuit on behalf of Students for Life, described the outcome as a victory for free speech.
“Today’s college students will be tomorrow’s legislators, judges, commissioners, and voters, and Cal State San Marcos now understands that it can’t force student citizens to pay for advocacy of views the university decides are orthodox while effectively excluding funding for competing views,” said ADF senior counsel Tyler Langhofer. “There can be no marketplace of ideas where the government favors certain views and suppresses others.”
Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, the nation’s largest pro-life student group with more than 1,225 chapters, said “pro-life students should have every opportunity available to them that pro-abortion students have.”
“Public universities have no right to use their power, including mandatory student fees, to restrict or silence speech they don’t like,” said Ms. Hawkins.
“Because of the initiative and courage of student leaders at Cal State–San Marcos, pro-life students at public universities across California will benefit from the administration’s policy reversal.”
• Washington Times national reporter Valerie Richardson contributed to this report.
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