For a second time, pro-life activists at Fresno State have been hit by thuggery.
This time, an attacker destroyed fliers several students had been handing out, ripping some from walls and others right from their hands, according to the Alliance Defending Freedom.
And now lawyers defending the pro-lifers want to know how the school handled punishment for the offender.
In the previous case, a health professor, declaring "college campuses are not free speech areas," wiped out pro-life messages that had been chalked on sidewalks with permission last November. He was ordered by a judge to pay $17,000, $15,000 for lawyers' fees and $1,000 to each of the students, and take two hours of free-speech training. The professor, Greg Thatcher, had claimed the students could express themselves only in a "free speech area," which the university eliminated two years ago.
The video is here:
ADF said the "animosity toward pro-life students at Fresno State" continues.
Its lawyers now have written a letter to Fresno officials on behalf of Students for Life and President Bernadette Tasy asking to submit the results of a disciplinary proceeding after a student vandal destroyed fliers that Tasy and her organization had paid to print.
"Students don't hand in their First Amendment freedoms when they walk on campus," said ADF Legal Counsel Travis Barham. "Fresno State has rightly acknowledged the constitutionally protected freedoms of Fresno State Students for Life in the past, and we are hopeful the university will be similarly respectful here. Students deserve to know if and how their administrators choose to deal with acts of vandalism that target them and their point of view."
The attack happened in April, but it was only recently that the school refused to provide the victims with information about the case against the attacker.
The school claimed the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act required them to withhold that information.
But ADF argued the regulations interpreting FERPA make it clear that an educational institution may release an education record if the disclosure "is to a victim of an alleged perpetrator of a crime of violence."
In fact, victims are entitled to names, rules or code sections, any findings in the case, and any discipline, ADF told the school.
"Our students have already shown great courage and cheerful conviction in the face of hostility at Fresno State," said Students for Life of America President Kristan Hawkins. "Across the country, we are seeing incredible opposition to the pro-life speech of our student leaders and volunteers as they speak for the defenseless, reach out to pregnant women, and educate on the violence of abortion. But our message of hope continues to help, heal, and transform, even in the face of vandalism."