Conservative professors and students are suing California community colleges – and winning

Lawsuits over pronouns, posters and alleged censorship

Many of the lawsuits in California follow the same general contours.

According to the details of one case, David Richardson, a professor at Madera Community College, began using the pronouns “Th, Re, Wed” while attending a presentation on personal gender pronouns in 2021. When the host later called out Richardson about his choice of pronouns, calling his actions “harmful to trans people,” Richardson doubled down on his statement, claiming that his choice of pronouns was part of his right to free speech. After the college disciplined him, Richardson sued the State Center Community College District, which oversees Madera Community College. The case is still pending in federal court.

Another lawsuit at Bakersfield College dates back to 2019, when two professors, Matthew Garrett and Erin Miller, put together a campus lecture on “freedom of speech” and “campus censorship.” During the conversation, Garrett and Miller criticized the school for supporting Kern Sol News, a nonprofit news site, and criticized certain professors at the school’s Social Justice Institute. Bakersfield College administrators then wrote a memo in their personnel files criticizing Garrett and Miller for “unprofessional conduct,” effectively “limiting” their First Amendment rights, the lawsuit says.

The Kern Community College District settled with Garrett this summer, paying him $2.4 million on the condition that he drop all of his legal complaints against the district. It’s less than 1% of the district’s annual budget, but for a faculty member, many of whom make about $100,000 a year, it’s a significant amount. Miller is continuing the case.

In the settlement, both Garrett and the district deny any wrongdoing. “The settlement is in the best interest of the district and allows us to focus on the future and continue to provide quality higher education to Kern County students without further legal distractions,” Norma Rojas, a spokeswoman for the Kern Community College District, said in a statement written statement. “To be clear, the dispute with Matthew Garrett was a disciplinary matter arising from his disruptive actions on campus, none of which involved free speech.”

Miller and Garrett declined multiple requests for comment.

Another case in the Central Valley stems from an incident in 2021. At the time, Juliette Colunga was a student at Clovis Community College and a member of the leadership team of her college’s branch of the Young America’s Foundation, a national conservative organization with local branches on over 2,000 college campuses. She and two other students placed a series of posters criticizing communism throughout campus. The university then removed it after other students complained. Later, Colunga and her co-leaders called for pro-life posters to be posted, but school leaders said they could only be placed in a different location, far from where they normally placed their content. With help from Ortner and the Young America’s Foundation, she and the other student leaders filed a lawsuit claiming that the school district’s actions violated their First Amendment rights.

This summer, the State Center Community College District, which oversees Clovis Community College, agreed to pay her, the other student leaders, their lawyers and the Young America’s Foundation $330,000 as part of a legal settlement. The district also agreed to adopt a new policy for posting posters on campus and to provide First Amendment training to all of its managers.

“It was never about making money,” Colunga said. “It wasn’t just about creating change, but also about ensuring that change sticks for future students.”

Kristen Kuenzli Corey, general counsel for the State Center Community College District, declined to comment on Colunga’s lawsuit, Richardson’s lawsuit and another similar lawsuit. She pointed to the briefs in the cases as evidence of the district’s position.

Do civil servants and students have the right to freedom of expression?

In general, the free speech provision of the First Amendment governs the relationship between the people and government. Public college faculty and students have a First Amendment right to free speech, but in a more limited form, said David Snyder, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition. Various courts have found that public institutions can restrict the freedom of expression of their employees – in this case teachers – if an employee’s behavior runs counter to the institution’s mission. Schools also have the right to restrict their students’ speech, but only if it disrupts the classroom. The most famous example is the “Tinker Test,” in which the U.S. Supreme Court determined that students had a First Amendment right to free speech as long as their conduct did not “substantially and substantially interfere with education.”

“What also matters is what’s in the school’s policy,” Snyder said. Regardless of the constitutional issues, a professor or student can sue if they believe the school’s actions conflict with its policies.

In addition to its diversity, equity and inclusion policies, the California community college system also has an academic freedom policy, which states that faculty, staff and students “should have the opportunity to express their opinions at the campus level.”

The diversity, equity and inclusion policies do not conflict with academic freedom policies, nor do they “censor or coerce speech,” said Paul Feist, a spokesman for the community college system, citing a lawsuit filed by Daymon Johnson, a professor at Bakersfield College, was submitted as evidence. Johnson disagrees with the college’s principles of diversity, equity and inclusion and contends that forcing them to adhere to them would violate his rights. A judge recently dismissed Johnson’s claims, even though he appealed the ruling. Neither the district nor Johnson responded to requests for comment.

Of the seven lawsuits identified by CalMatters, most have taken years to resolve.

Colunga’s lawsuit was settled this summer — nearly three years after she and the other student leaders first hung the posters at Clovis Community College. By the time the case was resolved, she had already graduated and transferred to Master’s University, a private, four-year Christian college near Los Angeles.

She said the school doesn’t have an official chapter of the Young America’s Foundation but is trying to start one.

Adam Echelman reports on California’s community colleges in collaboration with Open Campus, a nonprofit newsroom focused on higher education.