Inside Higher Ed reports that a California court has ruled in a new free speech on campus case: “The court ruled that the Leonard Law, which protects students at private California colleges from ‘disciplinary sanctions’ levied for speech that would be protected off-campus, only applies to students currently enrolled at an institution.”

The student who filed the suit was Jason Antebi, a 2004 Occidental College graduate who hosted a radio show at the college called “Rant and Rave.” Antebi was removed from the show for saying some controversial things about his fellow students and sued the school. However, the court ruled that Antebi could not pursue damages because he had graduated by the time he filed a lawsuit.

According to Inside Higher Ed, several free-speech experts are wary of the decision:

Mark Goodman, director of the Student Press Law Center, said that he thinks that the court’s interpretation of the Leonard Law is “certainly not what the intent of the legislature was in enacting the statute … it really effectively means that [institutions] can censor all they want if they do so in the last semester of the student’s senior year.”
Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, said that, under the court’s interpretation of the Leonard Law, an institution could protect itself by simply expelling a student, because the student would no longer be enrolled, and thus would be in the same situation as Antebi.

We have some free speech experts here at Phi Beta Cons. I’d love to know what people think about the ruling and the precedent it sets for free speech on campus.