We have been following the case of Portland State University Professor Bruce Gilley, who was blocked from the Twitter account of the University of Oregon’s Division of Equity and Inclusion after tweeting “All men are created equal.” The case was an obvious attack on free speech by the University of Oregon. Now the public will pay over three-quarters of a million dollars for the university’s anti-free speech conduct.
Gilley was excluded from a Diversity Twitter page by the Communication Manager of the Division of Equity and Inclusion at the University of Oregon. (The manager is identified as “tova stabin” who the court notes “spells her name with all lowercase letters.”). Stabin has now left the school.
In Gilley v. Stabin, Judge Hernández previously offered this background:
On or about June 14, 2022, Defendant stabin, in her capacity as Communication Manager, posted a “racism interruptor” to the Division’s Twitter page, @UOEquity. The Tweet read “You can interrupt racism,” and the prompt read, “It sounded like you just said_________. Is that really what you meant?”
Plaintiff Bruce Gilley, a professor at Portland State University, responded to the Tweet the same day it was posted with the entry “all men are created equal.” Plaintiff is critical of diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DEI”) principles, and intended his tweet to promote a colorblindness viewpoint. Plaintiff tagged @uoregon and @UOEquity in his re-tweet. Also on June 14, 2022, Defendant stabin blocked Plaintiff from the @UOEquity account. Once he was blocked, Plaintiff could no longer view, reply to, or retweet any of @UOEquity’s posts….
Plaintiff later filed a public records request with the University of Oregon to inquire about the policy VPEI uses to block Twitter users. … The University initially responded that there was no written policy and that “the staff member that administers the VPEI Twitter account and social media has the autonomy to manage the accounts and uses professional judgment when deciding to block users.” …Plaintiff also asked whether other Twitter users had been blocked from @UOEquity, and the University responded that two other users were blocked. … Plaintiff asserts that “[b]oth of the other users have expressed politically conservative viewpoints, including criticizing posts of the @UOEquity account.” Am. Compl. ¶ 70.
On June 27, 2022, Defendant stabin responded to an email from University of Oregon employee Kelly Pembleton, who was helping respond to Plaintiff’s public records request. Defendant stabin sent the following in response to Pembleton’s request for a list of the users she had blocked on @UOEquity:
“Doesn’t take real long. I’ve only ever blocked three people. Here is the list. I’m assuming the issue is this guy Bruce Gilley. He was not just being obnoxious, but bringing obnoxious people to the site some. We don’t have much following and it’s the social I pay least attention to. Here’s a screenshot of everyone I’ve ever blocked. I hardly do it (and barely know how to).”
Minutes later, Defendant stabin sent another email to Pembleton about the records request. The email reads, in pertinent part:
“Oh, I see. It is Bruce who brought it. Not surprising. He was commenting on one of the “interrupt racism” posts, as I recall talking something about the oppression of white men, if I recall. Really, they are just there to trip you up and make trouble. Ugh. I’m around at home for a quick zoom about it.’
The court previously denied the university’s motion to dismiss. The University of Oregon then continued to spend public dollars to try to defend its right to censor academics and students in this arbitrary way. Now it has lost the key fight over the preliminary injunction.
In his decision, Judge Hernández zeroed in on the guidelines allowing for the censorship of offensive or hateful speech:
“Plaintiff has shown that the two provisions of the social media guidelines he challenges create a risk of censoring speech that is protected by the First Amendment. As Plaintiff points out, speech that is “hateful,” “racist,” or “otherwise offensive” is protected by the Constitution. Pl. Br. 3 (citing Snyder v. Phelps, 562 U.S. 443, 454 (2011); Cohen v. California, 403 U.S. 15, 25 (1971); Am. Freedom Def. Initiative v. King County, 904 F.3d 1126, 1131 (9th Cir. 2018)). The Court held that the @UOEquity account was a limited public forum, meaning that any restrictions on speech must be reasonable and viewpoint-neutral. Op. & Ord. 25.5 Plaintiff is correct that the provisions allowing the Communications Manager to block “hateful,” “racist,” and “otherwise offensive” speech create a risk of viewpoint discrimination because “[w]hat is offensive or hateful is often in the eye of the beholder.” Pl. Br. 4. If Plaintiff was blocked for posting “all men are created equal” because the post was viewed as hateful, racist, or otherwise offensive, such blocking would violate the Constitution. Deleting or hiding the post for that reason would also violate the Constitution.”
Now the University of Oregon will pay out $193,000 in legal fees to Angus Lee Law Firm and the Institute for Free Speech in their representation of Gilley. That is on top of more than half a million dollars paid to its own attorneys.
Oregon has agreed to revise its social media guidelines and provide training to its employees. However, the university elected to litigate the case at a heavy cost to the taxpayers.
These losses rarely result in administrators being held accountable for not just the original transgression but the decision to litigate dubious claims. We have seen administrators and faculty treat public or private funds as a subsidy for radical policies. For example, Oberlin College abused a small family grocery store for years and racked up millions in costs and damages that it expected alumni to cover. There was no blowback for its president or administrators.
I currently have free speech claims (and others) against the State of Oregon and two co-conspirators. If I can get my facts before a jury, the taxpayers are going to be forced to pay more than $1m for the state and federal Constitutional violations encouraged by the Attorney General who has taken over the case in order to protect corrupt lawyers and bureaucrats. I was illegally blacklisted by the state. I have to prosecute my case in the public interest because I have no money, and being labeled an enemy of the state frightens attorneys away. The AG’s staff concealed evidence in order to win on motions to dismiss at the trial court level.
Turley– “Now the public will pay over three-quarters of a million dollars for the university’s anti-free speech conduct.”
I wish it were ten times that amount.
Gee, I wonder if the University would have fired him for quoting the Constitution?
Oregon conspired to blacklist me for having utilized my free speech rights. The state apparatus does not give a shit about the Constitution.
This may be an excellent example to support “loser pays”. The loser in this case is the administrator(s) that chose to censor and then defend the lawsuit using public monies. “Loser pays” would make it incumbent upon these administrators to be personably liable for attorney fees, court costs, and damages that prove to be the result of their actions, and not incur financial liability for the State taxpayers. The personal risk attendant to “loser pays” may have made the administrators at Oregon, and surely at Oberlin, think about their decisions more critically.
Twitter is private property; the U of O is public property.
Only the owner(s) of Twitter has the power to “claim and exercise” dominion over that private property.
The University of Oregon is public property and is bound by the 1st Amendment freedom of speech.
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“[Private property is] that dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in exclusion of every other individual.”
– James Madison
DEI violates the Equal Protection Clause and is, therefore, unconstitutional.
“All men are created equal.”
– Declaration of Independence, 1776
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After creation, all men attain their own success or failure.
They are willing to sacrifice taxpayer money to justify their agenda – sort of similar to islamic jihadis willing to sacrifice their believers by having the fly planes into towers or strap explosives on to a child and them detonate the bomb in the middle of Israel. Same mindset – the ends justify the means.
When are average Americans going to wake up to the lethality of this prog cult in our midst and put an end to it once and for all.
Excellent! Another win for free speech and a blow to fascists in academia!
https://theoregonian.visitlink.me/QktwMj
The Oregon house of representatives hosts a drag queen.
I saw that. How utterly beyond the Pake. Aren’t there enough sane adults remaining to stop this insanity?
I know of a university where the administrators openly joked that they did not worry about being held liable for their actions because the university would be. Impunity, it seems, comes in many guises.
Just eliminate Government run schools and colleges as well as government funding of private education and the problem goes away.
Private entities can censor – but they are also responsible to the marketplace for their actions.
“$193,000 in legal fees to Angus Lee Law Firm and the Institute for Free Speech in their representation of Gilley. That is on top of more than half a million dollars paid to its own attorneys“
193k vs 500k. Why the big difference?
In my experience a public office handling some task compared to a private entity doing the same will employ about twice as many employees to actually perform the same labor. It’s all part of the bloat of government.
It’s kind of money laundering isn’t it…
Yes, that is a huge spread, WHY such a large spread if fees and costs????
The link provided for the decision takes me to a document dated July 2024. Is this old news, or was there some recent update to the status?
And where will the money come from? If these administrators had some skin in the game this sort of behavior might be curbed. But there is no penalty, financial or otherwise to the “decision” makers so it’s like it never happened. . .
It appears from what was seen in e-mails that there was little thought whatsoever as to the action the defendants were taking. It seems insulting, tone deaf, and obvious censorship on the face of it. Also it appears the people using the e-mail process must never have considered that every time you send such communications they are potentially creating a legal document that can literally come back and bite them in the posterior. Luckily they did not consider that and made the plaintiff’s case even easier.
In medicine we were often cautioned that anything you put on paper in a paper chart or recorded electronically was a legal document. So much so that every note in EMR’s (electronic medical records) are kept in the record even if you make a change and you end up with the original record and the changed document.
I wander if this particular university or any university would start to consider firing or suing people if they act outside of university parameters and their actions lead to the university losing money. I wonder also whether the university insurer would consider going after the defendant Stabin personally to recoup their losses.
“I wander if this particular university or any university would start to consider firing . . .”
Fat chance. They’ll sooner get rid of the academic who is not “collegial,” the dissenter, i.e., the victim.
Those underlings are doing exactly what their deans and activist faculty want them to do: Censor.
I remember a time when computer records were not lawful evidence. Times do change.
How much more thrifty to simply post Gilley’s post with rebuttal.
In my case, I acquired a smoking gun document through the public records act. That did not stop the AG from continuing to support a sham defense. If they can get away with it, it is legal.
If a foundational statement of America’s existence is antithetical to the beliefs of a university’s social media moderator I’d say it’s time for that university to take a serious look at itself.
“racism interruptor”
In the world of honest language that means: Censorship.
The paradigm shift from the DEI fad to “DEI is racism” has been head-spinning.
To a degree because it’s criminal behavior in addition to a mock racism. Looting, theft, money laundering, destruction at the heart of it. It’s envy.
Professor, you mention the Oberlin case. Oberlin’s General Counsel, who orchestrated that catastrophe for Oberlin, was then hired by Cornell University, a much larger school, as its General Counsel, and got a significant pay raise. She is now in the process of orchestrating an even bigger legal catastrophe for Cornell.
Horrors, Wiseoldlawyer! Hire anybody woke to a leadership position, and they will destroy the enterprise–government, business, or religion–and they will never see the light. You can’t deprogram these people because there’s always a market somewhere else for their quackery.
“. . . bigger legal catastrophe for Cornell.”
Is this the case? — (Presumed guilty) Cornell Physics Professor Mukund Vengalattore.
After some 10 years (?!), he and Cornell just settled for an undisclosed amount.