[VIDEO] Banned from Handing Out Constitutions on Constitution Day

On Constitution Day this year, Robert Van Tuinen, an Army veteran and a student at Modesto Junior College (MJC) in California, was trying to pass out copies of the United States Constitution and drum up support for his proposed Young Americans for Liberty chapter on campus. School administrators at MJC didn’t like this and decided to shut him down in spite of the fact that MJC is a public university that must comply with the First Amendment.

Luckily, Van Tuinen caught the entire episode on tape.

In the video, school officials make a variety of vague justifications for shutting down his protected speech, including this gem:

School security: Who you are representing today is The Heritage Foundation.

Van Tuinen: I’m not representing The Heritage Foundation. They simply made the [pocket] Constitutions, which [are] the highest law of the land, that I am passing out.

Van Tuinen filed suit yesterday in federal court, alleging violations of his First and Fourteenth Amendment rights. Van Tuinen has some First Amendment heavyweights in his corner,including the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, and the case appears to be a slam dunk. It is well-settled law that students don’t give up their First Amendment rights as soon as they enroll. Other, similar “free speech zones” have been struck down by federal courtsbefore.

Via: The Foundry

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Campus cop stops student from handing out Constitutions … ON CONSTITUTION DAY

A police officer at Modesto Junior College in California told a patriotic libertarian student that it was against college rules for him to hand out copies of the U.S. Constitution on campus.

Ironically, this flagrant violation of the student’s Constitutional rights took place on September 17th: Constitution Day.

The exchange between student Robert Van Tuinen and a campus police officer was captured on video. Tuinen told the officer that he wished to start a Young Americans for Liberty chapter on campus, and hoped that passing out copies of the Constitution would generate interest in that. The officer, however, maintained that Van Tuinen was not allowed to distribute flyers without college authorization.

“Anytime anything is being passed out it has to be… you have to go through the Student Development office,” said the officer.

The irony of being told to stop distributing copies of the Constitution was not lost on Van Tuinen.

“Do you know what this is?” he responded. “Why are their rules tied to my free speech?”

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects the right of people to exercise free speech and peaceably assemble in public places.

Nevertheless, the officer brought Van Tuinen to the Student Development office, where administrator Christine Serrano told him that he could only hand out flyers while inside a “free speech zone” on campus.

Via: Daily Caller

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