Dive Summary:
- Two of three members of a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit overturned a ruling Tuesday that dismissed the complaints of student journalists at Oregon State University after administrators signed off on the seizure and disposal of a conservative student publication's distribution bins.
- The majority wrote that the students provided enough evidence to make a free speech violation claim, but were prevented from doing so when the lower court judges didn't allow them to amend their lawsuit, which will now be allowed to continue.
- Oregon State University may have violated the students' free speech rights under both the First and Fourteenth Amendments, the court says, and the mere knowledge of the confiscation by top-level officials including the university's president could be a violation even if they didn't directly order it.
From the article:
Administrators at Oregon State University who signed off on the seizure and disposal of a conservative student publication's distribution bins might have to go to trial after all, after an appeals court on Tuesday overturned a ruling dismissing the students' complaint against them. Two of three members of a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit concluded that the student journalists had provided sufficient evidence to make a claim of free speech violation, but were prevented from presenting it because the lower court judges erred in not letting them amend their lawsuit. ...