The Supreme Court Strikes a Blow for Religious Freedom https://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/politics-current-affairs/2021/03/the-supreme-court-strikes-a-blow-for-religious-freedom/

March 11, 2021 | Dan McLaughlin
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While one might have thought that the Bill of Rights renders the entire United States a “free-speech zone,” at Georgia Gwinnett College, a state school, the term is applied only to two small areas, open only eighteen hours a day—where students are allowed to speak freely only after securing advance permission from the administration. Such activities as distributing pamphlets or holding up picket signs are elsewhere forbidden, or, at the very least, can be stopped by the authorities. On Monday, this policy was sharply rebuked by an eight-to-one Supreme Court ruling in the case of Uzuegbunam v. PreczewskiDan McLaughlin comments:

Chike Uzuegbunam, an evangelical Christian student, was told that if he wanted to evangelize his faith to his fellow students, he would have to apply three days in advance for a permit, and then confine his activities to one of the two free-speech zones. After receiving the permit, he was told by campus cops that he could not share his faith even in one of the speech zones, because doing so violated a campus ban on “disturb[ing] the peace and/or comfort of person(s).” (Of course, these days, almost any opinion, especially on matters of faith, will make someone on campus uncomfortable.)

So he sued, represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom and supported by Jeff Sessions and the Trump Justice Department. In response, the college changed the policy and tried to get the lawsuit dismissed as moot. Eventually, the issue reached the Supreme Court. And . . . Justice Clarence Thomas delivered a clear victory for the plaintiffs.

Chief Justice John Roberts’s dissent, it’s worth noting, turned not on the majority’s interpretation of the First Amendment, but on a procedural issue. That the court ruled as it did, argues McLaughlin, makes its judgment’s significance for religious liberty much greater:

Uzuegbunam . . . sought “nominal damages”—a judgment of just enough money that he could show the world his rights had been violated, and set a precedent to deter Georgia Gwinnett and other colleges from violating other students’ rights in such a way going forward. The alternative—dismissing such a suit every time a college gets called out and changes its policy—does less to help protect the free speech of students who may not be determined enough to take their campus administrators to court.

Read more on National Review: https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/03/clarence-thomas-delivers-decisive-ruling-in-religious-free-speech-case/