![](\"https:\/\/cdn.rt.com\/files\/2016.12\/thumbnail\/58632ca5c461887c418b45e7.jpg\")
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A lawsuit is accusing Georgia Gwinnett College of censoring free speech. A student was allegedly forbidden from preaching in the school\u2019s \u201cfree speech zone,\u201d itself a violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the Constitution, the lawsuit states.<\/p>\n
The issue of freedom of speech in academia has been an increasingly hot button issue, especially for Georgia Gwinnett College (GGC), a public college in Lawrenceville, Georgia. Chike Uzuegbunam, a current student, claims that he was prevented from preaching at one of the school\u2019s two \u201cfree speech zones<\/em>\u201d despite having followed the school\u2019s request procedure.<\/p>\n The lawsuit was filed by the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a conservative Christian nonprofit involved in lawsuits defending business owners\u2019 rights to refuse to provide services to same-sex couples.<\/p>\n The lawsuit<\/a>\u00a0claims that Uzuegbunam “sought to share his Christian faith peacefully<\/em>” on the campus but was told to get permission to speak at one of the two \u201cspeech zones<\/em>\u201d on campus. The speech zones are open 18 hours each week, according<\/a>\u00a0to the Gwinnett Daily Post.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Sidewalk Speech Zone comprises approximately 11,718 square feet<\/em>,\u201d and occupies approximately 0.001 percent of the campus, the lawsuit notes.<\/p>\n Uzuegbunam was required to get permission to use one of the two tiny zones within three days prior to his planned demonstration. Uzuegbunam claimed to have done so but was still stopped from distributing pamphlets after about 20 minutes by campus security who claimed to have received \u201csome calls from people complaining.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n The suit states that Uzuegbunam\u2019s First Amendment protection to freedom of speech was violated as well as his Fourteenth Amendment guarantee to equal protection under law, because non-religious activities were not restricted in such a manner.<\/p>\n \u201cThe lack of criteria, factors, or standards in Defendants\u2019 Speech Zone Policy, the related provisions of GGC\u2019s Student Code of Conduct, and associated practices renders these policies and practices unconstitutionally vague and in violation of Plaintiff\u2019s right to due process of law under the Fourteenth Amendment,<\/em>\u201d the lawsuit claims.<\/p>\n On Thursday, a GGC spokeswoman told<\/a>\u00a0the Lawrenceville Patch the college had not received any official notification of the lawsuit and would not comment on pending litigation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Via RT<\/a>. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A lawsuit is accusing Georgia Gwinnett College of censoring free speech. A student was allegedly forbidden from preaching in the school\u2019s \u201cfree speech zone,\u201d itself a violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the Constitution, the lawsuit states. The issue of freedom of speech in academia has been an increasingly hot button issue, especially […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":287563,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-287562","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=287562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287562\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/287563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}