Georgia Gwinnett Student Wins U.S. Supreme Court Free Speech Case

GWINNETT COUNTY, GA — A U.S. Supreme Court decision Monday against Georgia Gwinnett College will allow former students who say their religious rights were violated to seek nominal damages.

The decision touches on two issues: freedom of speech on a college campus, and whether or not nominal damages are necessary once an issue has been settled outside the courts.

The case stems from an incident in 2016 when then-student Chike Uzuegbunam was told he couldn’t lecture about his Christian faith at a plaza near Georgia Gwinnett’s library. Other students had complained about him, according to The New York Times, so a campus police officer told Uzuegbunam he could only distribute literature and have one-on-one conversations. To do more than that, he was told, would constitution disorderly conduct. Uzuegbunam responded by suing Georgia Gwinnett, saying that it had violated his right to free speech.

At first, the college tried to defend its policy, arguing in court papers that Uzuegbunam’s “contentious religious language” had “a tendency to incite hostility.” Finally, though, the college changed its policy in 2017 to allow students to speak anywhere on campus, rendering the case moot and killing any possibility of nominal damages — which in Uzuegbunam’s case was only $1.

A trial judge and U.S. Court of Appeals judge agreed the case was now moot. The U.S. Supreme Court did not. “Nominal damages are certainly concrete,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in support of the 8-1 majority.

In a rare dissent, Chief Justice John Roberts argued that ruling on issues that had already been settled simply because nominal damages were attached would have the effect of “turning judges into advice columnists.”

“If nominal damages can preserve a live controversy,” Roberts wrote, as reported in The New York Times, “then federal courts will be required to give advisory opinions whenever a plaintiff tacks on a request for a dollar.”

The decision about nominal damages will now return to the 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeal in Atlanta, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Georgia Gwinnett College sent this statement on Tuesday to Patch: “Georgia Gwinnett College has supported and continues to support the rights of individuals to freely and openly share their thoughts and ideas on the College’s campus in accordance with the First Amendment. Georgia Gwinnett College cannot otherwise comment on pending litigation.”

Read the story in The New York Times.