At California’s community colleges, conservative professors and students are making their voices heard — not just in the classroom but in court. Their lawsuits have already led community colleges to pay millions in settlements and legal fees.

CalMatters identified at least seven cases filed since 2020 in which professors or students have sued their community college districts for issues related to free speech. Most of the cases are still ongoing and are located in California’s Central Valley, in counties where Republicans often outnumber Democrats. Although separate, many of these lawsuits include similar allegations: that programs promoting diversity, equity and inclusion are restricting the right to free speech under the First Amendment. The University of California system is facing a similar case in Santa Cruz.

In a state with 73 community college districts and 116 community colleges, such lawsuits are rare. Still, president-elect Donald Trump has used similar cases as fodder for national policy, such as a 2019 executive order he signed regarding free speech on college campuses, which he justified by pointing to a few conservative and religious students who claimed colleges had restricted their rights. Throughout his campaign for this year’s election, Trump promised to continue that focus if re-elected.

“The time has come to reclaim our once great educational institutions from the radical left,” he said in a campaign video last year, later adding that he would protect free speech and remove “all Marxist diversity, equity, and inclusion bureaucrats” from college campuses.

Even when these lawsuits get dismissed, community colleges can still pay a price. In a Riverside County lawsuit, Moreno Valley College professor Eric Thompson claimed the community college violated his right to free speech when it fired him. The lawsuit alleges that his termination was a result of various student complaints, all stemming from opinions that Thompson had presented in class or over email with the wider college community. He argued, for example, that homosexuality is the result of social factors, not genetics, and that conversion therapy should be allowed. Thompson lost the case but public records show that the district still paid nearly $900,000 in legal costs to fight it.

“It was never about making money. It was not only about making change, but also about ensuring that change remains for future students.”
— Juliette Colunga, former student at Clovis Community College

For Daniel Ortner, an attorney who recently helped students and professors file three different lawsuits against community college districts, these cases are part of a broader trend of cracking down on controversial speech and forcing “conformity to a certain viewpoint,” especially on topics of race. Ortner works for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a nonprofit organization that focuses on free speech issues.

The community college system, the California State University system, and the UC Office of the President all have policies promoting diversity, equity and inclusion on their campuses, though each system has taken a different approach.

Ortner said the policies at the community college level are the strictest, and therefore, elicit more pushback from faculty. According to state regulations adopted in 2022, every community college district in the state must develop a policy to evaluate staff based on their ability to advance diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility.

“Students must experience campus and classroom cultures that they feel they can belong to, where they can thrive and succeed” said Eloy Ortiz Oakley, then-chancellor of the community college system, during a 2022 presentation about the new regulations. Of the more than 2 million students who enrolled at one of the state’s community colleges last year, most are low-income, including some students who are former foster youth or formerly incarcerated. Most students identify as Black, Hispanic, or Asian.

The California community college system has the “most diverse student population in the nation,” said Ortiz Oakley, later adding that neither the CSU nor the UC system had similar regulations in place. “We should be proud that we’re leading the way.”

Nationally, many college systems have taken the opposite approach. A total of 25 states have proposed or signed legislation curbing how colleges support diversity, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Lawsuits over pronouns, posters, and alleged censorship

Many of the California lawsuits follow the same general contours.

According to the details of one case, David Richardson, a professor at Madera Community College, started using the pronouns “Do, Re, Mi” while attending a 2021 presentation about personal gender pronouns. When the facilitator later approached Richardson about his choice of pronouns — calling his actions “harmful to trans people” — Richardson doubled down, claiming that his choice of pronouns was part of his right to free expression. 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.

The Campus Center of Bakersfield College on June 14, 2023. Photo by Larry Valenzuela, CalMatters/CatchLight Local

Another lawsuit at Bakersfield College dates back to 2019, when two professors, Matthew Garrett and Erin Miller, put together a campus talk about “free speech” and “campus censorship.” During the talk, Garrett and Miller criticized the school for supporting Kern Sol News, a nonprofit news site, and criticized specific professors at the school’s Social Justice Institute. Bakersfield College administrators then wrote a note in their personnel files, criticizing Garrett and Miller for “unprofessional conduct,” effectively “chilling” their First Amendment rights, according to the lawsuit.

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 around $100,000 a year, it’s a significant sum. Miller is continuing with 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 deliver quality higher education for students of Kern County without any further legal distractions,” said Norma Rojas, a spokesperson for the Kern Community College District, in a written statement. “To be clear, the dispute with Matthew Garrett was a disciplinary matter due to his disruptive actions on campus, none of which concerned freedom of speech.”

Miller and Garrett declined multiple requests to comment.

Another Central Valley case stems from an incident in 2021. At the time, Juliette Colunga was a student at Clovis Community College and on the leadership team of her college’s chapter of the Young America’s Foundation, a national conservative organization with local branches at over 2,000 college campuses. She and two other students placed a set of posters across campus that criticized communism, which the college then removed after other students complained. Later, Colunga and her co-leaders asked to put up pro-life posters, but school leaders said they could only be placed in a different location, far from the spot where they usually placed their content. With help from Ortner and the Young America’s Foundation, she and the other student leaders sued, alleging 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, her attorneys, and the Young America’s Foundation $330,000 as part of a legal settlement. The district also agreed to implement a new policy for displaying posters on campus and to provide “First Amendment training” to all of its managers.

“It was never about making money,” Colunga said. “It was not only about making change, but also about ensuring that change remains for future students.”

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

Do public employees, students have the right to free speech?

In general, the free speech provision of the First Amendment governs the relationship between people and government. Faculty and students at a public college have a right to free speech under the First Amendment, but in a slightly more limited manner, said David Snyder, the executive director of the First Amendment Coalition. Various courts have found that public institutions can limit the free speech rights of its employees — in this case, faculty — if an employee’s behavior runs counter to the mission of the institution. Schools also have a right to restrict their students’ speech, but only if it disrupts education. The most famous example is the “Tinker test,” where the U.S. Supreme Court said that students had a First Amendment right to free speech, as long as their conduct did not “materially and substantially interfere” with education.

Students walking at the Madera Community College campus on Aug. 28, 2023. Photo by Larry Valenzuela, CalMatters/CatchLight Local

“What also matters is what the school’s policies say,” Snyder said. Regardless of the constitutional questions, a professor or student can sue if they feel the school’s actions contradict its policies.

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

The regulations around diversity, equity and inclusion do not conflict with the academic freedom policy or otherwise “censor or compel speech,” said Paul Feist, a spokesperson for the community college system, and he pointed to a lawsuit filed by Bakersfield College professor Daymon Johnson as evidence. Johnson does not agree with the college’s principles of diversity, equity and inclusion and claims that being forced to adhere to them would infringe on his rights, according to the case. A judge recently dismissed Johnson’s claims, though he has 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 settled this summer — almost three years after she and the other student leaders first put up the posters at Clovis Community College. By the time the case settled, she had already graduated and transferred to The Master’s University, a private, four-year Christian college near Los Angeles.

She said the school doesn’t have an official chapter of Young America’s Foundation, but she’s trying to get one started.

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

CalMatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.