A student expelled from a public college for dubious reasons has been vindicated, and has picked up a cool $900,000 in the process.
Way back in 2007, Hayden Barnes was a student at Georgia’s Valdosta State University. The school at the time was planning to build two new parking garages on campus, and Barnes was strongly opposed. So, Barnes expressed his frustration on social media, posting an image collage to Facebook that, among other things, included a picture of Valdosta’s then-president Ronald Zaccari.
Zaccari promptly flew off the handle, labeling the collage a “threatening document” because it dubbed one of the garages the “Zaccari Memorial Parking Garage” (Zaccari said the name implied a threat to murder him). Declaring that Barnes was an imminent threat to both Valdosta at large and Zaccari’s own personal safety, the president unilaterally expelled him without even holding a hearing.
Since then, Barnes graduated from a different college, got a law degree, got married and had a kid. But he remained convinced that his expulsion from Valdosta was a grave wrong, and was determined to be vindicated in the courts. His initial lawsuit against the school transformed into a bruising seven-year legal battle.
Barnes’s case became a cause célèbre to advocates for campus civil liberties, being pushed with particular vigor by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). In 2013, Barnes was awarded $50,000 after a federal court found his due process rights had been violated by the school. Barnes’s fight continued, though, as he also pursued a separate claim that his First Amendment right to free speech had been improperly suppressed. (RELATED: Jury: College President Must Pay Expelled Student $50,000)
Finally, in January, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling overturning a lower court’s ruling against Barnes, reinstating his First Amendment claim against the school. The ruling set the stage for a huge payout from Valdosta, as it would have to cover Barnes’ eight years of attorney fees along with a civil judgment reflecting the school’s suppression of his civil rights.
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