Former student’s case against Fresno State to be revived

A former Fresno State student is moving forward with his claims that the university unfairly punished him for speaking out about his conservative political views.

Earlier this week, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Neil O’Brien’s federal lawsuit – which was thrown out by a lower court judge – can be reconsidered.

The opinion, released Thursday, said that O’Brien has grounds to allege that disciplinary action taken against him was an act of retaliation by university administrators he had publicly criticized.

In 2011, O’Brien, who was involved in the Central Valley Tea Party and took issue with the student body president being an undocumented immigrant, videotaped two professors as he confronted them about a poem published in La Voz de Aztlan: a Chicano student publication.

The poem called the United States “the land robbed by the white savage” and the “place of greed and slavery.”

After the videotaping incident, the university found that O’Brien’s action qualified as harassment, placed him on disciplinary probation and forbade him from coming within 100 feet of the Chicano and Latin American Studies Department.

The 9th Circuit Court agreed that O’Brien’s actions were subject to university discipline, but also said that he has sufficient evidence to claim that it was done in retaliation.

“Fresno State is a very liberal, progressive campus. They did not like his conservative points of view, so they did everything they could to retaliate against him to shut him down and shut him up,” O’Brien’s attorney, Brian Leighton, said Friday. “We’re going to move forward with all the vigor we can.”

The California State University’s Office of General Counsel is optimistic, though.

“At the conclusion of its opinion, the court went to great lengths to make clear that it was not deciding that there was retaliation in this case – noting that a motion for summary judgment may actually be appropriate in this matter – and, perhaps more importantly, it was not deciding that a student who engages in conduct protected by the First Amendment, and then later engages in unprotected conduct that is harassing and intimidating, could not be disciplined for that conduct,” the general counsel said in a statement.

“We are confident that when the actual facts are adjudicated in this matter, there will be no finding of retaliation.”

This story was originally published April 8, 2016 at 4:58 PM with the headline "Former student’s case against Fresno State to be revived."