No.

18-2149

IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT

PAUL HUNT,
Plaintiff-Appellant

v.

BOARD OF REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO, et al.,

Defendants-Appellees

On Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of New Mexico
No. 1:16-cv-00272
The Honorable Judith C. Herrera, United States District Judge

BRIEF AMICI CURIAE OF

FOUNDATION FOR INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS IN EDUCATION, CATO
INSTITUTE, AND PROFESSOR EUGENE VOLOKH IN SUPPORT OF
PLAINTIFF-APPELLANT

Ilya Shapiro
Counsel of Record
CATO INSTITUTE
1000 Mass. Ave. N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20001
(202) 842-0200
[email protected]

Counsel for Amici Curiae

 CORPORATE DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

Pursuant to Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 26.1, counsel for amici

certifies that (1) amici do not have any parent corporations, and (2) no publicly

held companies hold 10% or more of the stock or ownership interest in amici.

i
 INTEREST OF AMICI CURIAE1

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (“FIRE”) is a

nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting and protecting civil

liberties at our nation’s institutions of higher education. Since 1999, FIRE has

worked to protect student First Amendment rights at campuses nationwide. FIRE

believes that to best prepare students for success in our democracy, the law must

remain unequivocally on the side of robust free speech rights on campus. FIRE

coordinates and engages in targeted litigation to ensure that student First

Amendment rights are vindicated when violated at public institutions like the

University of New Mexico. The students FIRE defends rely on access to federal

courts to secure meaningful and lasting legal remedies to the irreparable harm of

censorship. If allowed to stand, the lower court’s ruling will threaten the possibility

of redress following violations of students’ First Amendment rights.

The Cato Institute (“Cato”) was established in 1977 as a nonpartisan public

policy research foundation dedicated to advancing the principles of individual

liberty, free markets, and limited government. Cato’s Robert A. Levy Center for

Constitutional Studies was established in 1989 to help restore the principles of

1
Pursuant to Rule 29(c)(5) of the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure, counsel
for amici states that no counsel for a party authored this brief in whole or in part
and no person, other than amici, its members, or its counsel made a monetary
contribution to the preparation or submission of this brief.

ii
limited constitutional government that are the foundation of liberty. Toward those

ends, Cato publishes books and studies, conducts conferences and forums,

publishes the annual Cato Supreme Court Review, and files amicus briefs.

Professor Eugene Volokh is Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of

Law at the UCLA School of Law, where he specializes in First Amendment law.

He is the author of The First Amendment and Related Statutes (6th ed. 2016).

iii
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

CORPORATE DISCLOSURE STATEMENT ..........................................................i

INTEREST OF AMICI CURIAE ............................................................................. ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS ......................................................................................... iv

TABLE OF AUTHORITIES .....................................................................................v

SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT .................................................................................1

ARGUMENT .............................................................................................................3
I. The District Court Construed the First Amendment Question
Too Narrowly...................................................................................................3

A. The Policies Under Which Plaintiff-Appellant Was Punished Are

Clearly Unconstitutional as Established by a Long Line of Decisions. 3
B. The Fact that Plaintiff’s Speech Took Place Online Does Not
Change the Calculus ..............................................................................9
II. The District Court Should Have Addressed the First Step of the Qualified
Immunity Analysis.........................................................................................10
III. Student Plaintiffs Already Face Significant Hurdles in Vindicating Their
Constitutional Rights in Court. ......................................................................14
A. Injunctive and Declaratory Claims Are Frequently Mooted
by Graduation. .....................................................................................14

B. Injunctive and Declaratory Claims Are Frequently Mooted by Policy

Changes During Litigation. .................................................................17

CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................20

CERTIFICATE OF COMPLIANCE .......................................................................22

CERTIFICATE OF DIGITAL SUBMISSION .......................................................23

CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE ................................................................................24

iv
 TABLE OF AUTHORITIES

Cases

Adler v. Duval Cty. Sch. Bd.,

112 F.3d 1475 (11th Cir. 1997) .............................................................. 15, 16

Bair v. Shippensburg Univ.,

280 F. Supp. 2d 357 (M.D. Pa. 2003)..............................................................9

Bd. of Sch. Comm'rs v. Jacobs,

420 U.S. 128 (1975).......................................................................................16

Booher v. N. Ky. Univ. Bd. of Regents,

No. 2:96-CV-135, 1998 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 11404 (E.D. Ky. July 21, 1998) ..9

Boston’s Children First v. Boston Sch. Comm.,

240 F. Sup. 2d 318 (D. Mass. 2003) ..............................................................17

Carroll v. Carman,
135 S. Ct. 348 (2014).....................................................................................12

Ceniceros v. Bd of Trs. of the San Diego Unified Sch. Dist.,

106 F.3d 878 (9th Cir. 1997) .........................................................................16

Cole v. Oroville Union High Sch.,

228 F.3d 1092 (9th Cir. 2000) ................................................................ 15, 16

Coll. Republicans at S.F. St. Univ. v. Reed,

523 F. Supp. 2d 1005 (N.D. Cal. 2007) ...........................................................9

Corder v. Lewis Palmer Sch. Dist. No. 38,

566 F.3d 1219 (10th Cir. 2009) .............................................................. 15, 16

Corry v. Leland Stanford Junior Univ., No. 740309

(Cal. Super. Ct. Feb. 27, 1995) (slip op.) ........................................................9

v
Dambrot v. Cent. Mich. Univ.,
55 F.3d 1177 (6th Cir. 1995) ...........................................................................9

DeJohn v. Temple Univ.,

537 F.3d 301 (3d Cir. 2008) ......................................................................8, 18

Doe v. Madison Sch. Dist. No. 321,

177 F.3d 789 (9th Cir. 1999) .........................................................................16

Doe v. Univ. of Mich.,

721 F. Supp. 852 (E.D. Mich. 1989) ...............................................................9

Fox v. Bd. of Trs. of the State Univ.,

42 F.3d 135 (2d Cir. 1994) ............................................................................16

Freedom from Religion Found. v. Concord Cmty. Sch.,

240 F. Supp. 3d 914 (N.D. Ind. 2017) ...........................................................18

Harlow v. Fitzgerald,
457 U.S. 800 (1979)................................................................................ 11, 12

Healy v. James,
408 U.S. 169 (1972).....................................................................................7, 8

Holloman v. Harland,
370 F.3d 1252 (11th Cir. 2004) .......................................................................4

Hope v. Pelzer,
536 U.S. 730 (2002).........................................................................................3

Hunt v. Bd. of Regents of the Univ. of N.M.,

No. 16-272 (D.N.M. Sept. 6, 2018) .............................................................5, 6

Husain v. Springer,
494 F.3d 108 (2d Cir. 2007) ..........................................................................17

Husain v. Springer,
691 F. Supp. 2d 339 (E.D.N.Y. 2009) ...........................................................16

Lane v. Simon,

vi
 495 F.3d 1182 (10th Cir. 2007) .....................................................................16

McCauley v. Univ. of the V.I.,

618 F.3d 232 (3d Cir. 2010) ............................................................................8

Papish v. Board of Curators of the University of Missouri,

410 U.S. 667 (1973).........................................................................................8

Parents Involved in Cmty. Sch. v. Seattle Sch. Dist. No. 1,

551 U.S. 701 (2007).......................................................................................18

Pearson v. Callahan,
555 U.S. 223 (2009).......................................................................................12

Perea v. Baca,
817 F.3d 1198 (10th Cir. 2016) .......................................................................4

PeTA v. Rasmussen,
298 F.3d 1198 (10th Cir. 2002) .......................................................................6

Procunier v. Martinez,
416 U.S. 396 (1974).........................................................................................5

Reichle v. Howards,
566 U.S. 658 (2012).......................................................................................12

Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union,

521 U.S. 844 (1997).......................................................................................10

Roberts v. Haragan,
346 F. Supp. 2d 853 (N.D. Tex. 2004) ......................................................9, 18

Sapp v. Renfroe,
511 F.2d 175 (5th Cir. 1975) .........................................................................16

Saucier v. Katz,
533 U.S. 194 (2001)................................................................................ 11, 12

Smith v. Tarrant Cty. Coll. Dist.,

694 F. Supp. 2d 610 (N.D. Tex. 2010) ............................................................9

vii
Smith v. Univ. of Wash. Law School,
233 F.3d 1188 (9th Cir. 2000) .......................................................................17

Snyder v. Phelps,
562 U.S. 443 (2010).....................................................................................6, 7

Speech First, Inc. v. Schlissel,

333 F. Supp. 3d 700 (E.D. Mich. 2018) ........................................................17

Terminiello v. Chicago,
337 U.S. 1 (1949).............................................................................................5

Thornburgh v. Abbott,
490 U.S. 401 (1989).........................................................................................6

Univ. of Cincinnati Chapter of Young Am. for Liberty v. Williams,

12-cv-155, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 80967 (S.D. Ohio Jun. 12, 2012) ............9

UWM Post, Inc. v. Bd. of Regents of the Univ. of Wis.,

774 F. Supp. 1163 (E.D. Wisc. 1991) .............................................................9

Uzuegbunam v. Preczewski,
No. 1:16-cv-04658 (N.D. Ga. May 25, 2018) ...............................................17

Yeasin v. Durham,
719 F. App’x 844 (10th Cir. 2018) ..................................................................8

Zadeh v. Robinson,
902 F.3d 483 (5th Cir. 2018) .................................................................. 12, 13

Ziglar v. Abassi,
137 S. Ct. 1843 (2017).....................................................................................3

Other Authorities

viii
ADMIN. OFFICE OF U.S. COURTS, TABLE C-5: U.S. DISTRICT COURTS—MEDIAN
TIME INTERVALS FROM FILING TO DISPOSITION OF CIVIL CASES TERMINATED,
BY DISTRICT AND METHOD OF DISPOSITION, DURING THE 12-MONTH PERIOD
ENDING SEPTEMBER 30, 2017 .........................................................................15

Greg Lukianoff & Adam Goldstein, Speech Code Hokey Pokey: How Campus
Speech Codes Could Rebound, THE VOLOKH CONSPIRACY, Sept. 12, 2018, at
https://reason.com/volokh/2018/09/12/speech-code-hokey-pokey-how-
campus-speec. ................................................................................................19

Joanna Schwartz, Symposium: The Case Against Qualified Immunity,

93 Notre Dame L. Rev. 1798 (2018). ......................................................................12

Michael G. Collins, Section 1983 Litigation in a Nutshell

(5th ed. 2016) (emphasis added)....................................................................11
Tyler J. Buller, Subtle Censorship: The Problem of Retaliation Against High
School Journalism Advisers and Three Ways to Stop It,
40 J.L. & EDUC. 609 (2011) ...........................................................................14

U.S. DEP’T OF EDUC., NAT’L CTR. FOR EDUC. STATISTICS, DIGEST OF EDUCATION
STATISTICS, TABLE 326.10 .............................................................................14

ix
 SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT

The District Court’s decision to grant qualified immunity in this case

presents a serious threat to the ability of public college and university students to

meaningfully redress constitutional violations and prevent their repetition.

Plaintiff was disciplined for an impassioned anti-abortion Facebook post

pursuant to university policies prohibiting “unduly inflammatory” or “disparaging”

speech. There are decades of case law clearly establishing that speech cannot be

prohibited on these bases alone, that public university students have robust First

Amendment rights, and that basic First Amendment principles apply to online

speech. Instead of considering this extensive body of law, however, the lower court

looked only for cases addressing “whether graduate and professional schools

specifically (or universities generally) can regulate off-campus, online speech by

students that the university deems to be unprofessional or which violate its

applicable rules of professionalism,” and found no clearly established authority at

the time the discipline was imposed. Framing the question so narrowly all but

guarantees that qualified immunity will attach, frustrating the ability of litigants to

vindicate their rights in court even when a constitutional violation has taken place.

The lower court also exercised its discretion to consider only whether the

Plaintiff’s rights were clearly established without reaching the question of whether

a constitutional violation had occurred. Particularly in combination with the court’s

1
extremely narrow construction of the relevant legal question, this makes the

development of new constitutional law almost impossible. This compounds the

difficulty that students—whose constitutional claims are often mooted by

graduation or by policy changes during litigation—face when bringing a

constitutional challenge to university policies and practices.

Under the lower court’s holding, future constitutional violations will be left

without remedy, and lasting uncertainty over the contours of student First

Amendment rights will impermissibly chill campus speech on matters of public

concern. Despite remarkable precedential clarity with regard to the

unconstitutionality of broad and vague restrictions on public college student speech

rights, censorship is commonplace on campuses nationwide. As in the instant case,

public colleges continue to violate student First Amendment rights to limit

controversy or criticism. When students face a series of virtually insurmountable

hurdles to obtaining a judicial determination or legal consequence, student speech

rights are left at risk. Judicial clarity is required to keep students’ First Amendment

rights secure.

2
 ARGUMENT

I. The District Court Construed the First Amendment Question Too

Narrowly.

A. The Policies Under Which Plaintiff-Appellant Was Punished Are

Clearly Unconstitutional as Established by a Long Line of Decisions.

The lower court construed the constitutional question far too narrowly in

conducting its qualified immunity analysis when it focused so heavily on the fact

that Plaintiff-Appellant was a professional student and that his speech was made on

the internet. In looking only at “whether graduate and professional schools

specifically (or universities generally) can regulate off-campus, online speech by

students that the university deems to be unprofessional or which violate its

applicable rules of professionalism,” the lower court ignored decades of precedent

clearly establishing the First Amendment rights of students to speak out on matters

of public concern.

Nothing mandates that district courts construe the constitutional right before

them as narrowly as possible, as the District Court did here. “It is not necessary, of

course, that ‘the action in question has previously been held unlawful.’” Ziglar v.

Abassi, 137 S. Ct. 1843, 1867 (2017) (quoting Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S.

635, 640 (1987)); see also Hope v. Pelzer, 536 U.S. 730, 741 (2002) (“officials can

still be on notice that their conduct violates established law even in novel factual

circumstances.”).

3
 To the contrary, as this Court has explained, “the qualified immunity

analysis involves more than ‘a scavenger hunt for prior cases with precisely the

same facts. The more obviously egregious the conduct in light of prevailing

constitutional principles, the less specificity is required from prior case law to

clearly establish the violation.’” Perea v. Baca, 817 F.3d 1198, 1204 (10th Cir.

2016) (internal citations omitted) (quoting Casey v. City of Fed. Heights, 509 F.3d

1278, 1284 (10th Cir. 2007)). In Perea, this Court held that two Albuquerque

police officers were not entitled to qualified immunity on an excessive force claim

where they had pushed a mentally ill man from his bicycle when he tried to pedal

away from them during a welfare check and subsequently tasered the man ten

times, ultimately leading to his death. In denying the officers qualified immunity,

the Court did not look only for cases involving the use of tasers against mentally ill

cyclists, but rather for cases on the broader question of the use of force against

people who have only committed minor infractions and who are already subdued.

Id. at 1202. See also Holloman v. Harland, 370 F.3d 1252, 1278 (11th Cir. 2004)

(“We do not find it unreasonable to expect the defendants — who hold themselves

out as educators — to be able to apply [a well-known legal] standard,

notwithstanding the lack of a case with material factual similarities. ... Our

precedents would be of little value if government officials were free to disregard

fairly specific statements of principle they contain and focus their attention solely

4
on the particular factual scenarios in which they arose.”) (internal citations

omitted).

The policies under which Plaintiff-Appellant was punished—the Respectful

Campus and Social Media Policies—were clearly unconstitutional as established

by a long line of First Amendment decisions. The University of New Mexico’s

Respectful Campus Policy prohibits students from making, among other things,

“unduly inflammatory statements”—precisely what Plaintiff-Appellant was

accused of doing. Hunt v. Bd. of Regents of the Univ. of N.M., No. 16-272, at 2

(D.N.M. Sept. 6, 2018). Under any reasonable reading of First Amendment case

law, however, this provision is overly broad.

It is clearly established that the fact that speech is inflammatory does not

strip it of constitutional protection. As the U.S. Supreme Court held in Terminiello

v. Chicago, 337 U.S. 1, 4 (1949), free speech “may indeed best serve its high

purpose when it induces a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with

conditions as they are, or even stirs people to anger.” In Procunier v. Martinez, 416

U.S. 396, 416 (1974), the Supreme Court held that a regulation allowing prison

officials to censor prisoner mail that contained “inflammatory political, racial,

religious or other views” was overly broad because it was “not narrowly drawn to

5
reach only material that might be thought to encourage violence. . . .”2 See also

PeTA v. Rasmussen, 298 F.3d 1198, 1206 (10th Cir. 2002) (“the state may not

prevent speech simply because it may elicit a hostile response.”).

The medical school’s Social Media Policy prohibits, in pertinent part,

“engaging in dialogue that could disparage colleagues, competitors, or critics,” and

“reporting, speculating, discussing or giving any opinions on university topics or

personalities that could be considered sensitive, confidential or disparaging.” Hunt,

No. 16-272, at 2.

It is clearly established that the state may not prohibit speech on matters of

public concern simply because it is disparaging. The Supreme Court has held that

“[s]peech deals with matters of public concern when it can ‘be fairly considered as

relating to any matter of political, social, or other concern to the community,’” and

that “[t]he arguably ‘inappropriate or controversial character of a statement is

irrelevant to the question whether it deals with a matter of public concern.’” Snyder

v. Phelps, 562 U.S. 443, 453 (2010) (internal citations omitted). Plaintiff-

Appellant’s Facebook post about abortion—a topic that is the ongoing subject of

2
Although the Court later narrowed the scope of its ruling in Martinez in
Thornburgh v. Abbott, 490 U.S. 401 (1989), that narrowing did not affect the
Court’s holding that a restriction on the expression of inflammatory views was
overly broad.

6
one of America’s longest-running and most contentious public debates—

unquestionably meets this definition.

In Snyder, the Court addressed the question of whether the Westboro Baptist

Church’s picketing of a military funeral was conduct protected by the First

Amendment. It is difficult to imagine expression more disparaging than the signs

carried by WBC members, with their messages of “God Hates Fags” and “Thank

God for Dead Soldiers.” But the Court ruled that WBC members were speaking on

a matter of public concern and that although their speech “may fall short of refined

social or political commentary,” it was entitled to First Amendment protection:

Speech is powerful. It can stir people to action, move them to tears of

both joy and sorrow, and — as it did here — inflict great pain. On the
facts before us, we cannot react to that pain by punishing the speaker.
As a Nation we have chosen a different course — to protect even hurtful
speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate.

Id. at 460–61.

It is also clearly established that public university students have robust First

Amendment rights. As the Supreme Court held in Healy v. James, 408 U.S. 169,

180 (1972), “the precedents of this Court leave no room for the view that, because

of the acknowledged need for order, First Amendment protections should apply

with less force on college campuses than in the community at large. Quite to the

contrary, ‘[t]he vigilant protection of constitutional freedoms is nowhere more vital

than in the community of American schools.’” (internal citations omitted.)

7
Notably, Healy involved a public university’s refusal to recognize a campus

chapter of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) during a time of intense

turmoil on campus, for fear of the type of “violent and disruptive” activities that

had been associated with the national SDS organization—a restriction that has

clear parallels with UNM’s fear of “inflammatory” expression on its campus. Id. at

178.

In Papish v. Board of Curators of the University of Missouri, 410 U.S. 667,

670 (1973), the Supreme Court directly addressed the issue of offensive written

communications on college campuses, holding in response to the university’s

censorship of a student publication that “the mere dissemination of ideas — no

matter how offensive to good taste — on a state university campus may not be shut

off in the name alone of ‘conventions of decency.’”

Healy, Papish, and their progeny have given rise to a long line of district and

circuit court cases from around the country striking down public university speech

codes on First Amendment grounds.3 See McCauley v. Univ. of the V.I., 618 F.3d

232 (3d Cir. 2010); DeJohn v. Temple Univ., 537 F.3d 301 (3d Cir. 2008);

3
It should be noted that this Court’s decision in Yeasin v. Durham, 719 F. App’x
844 (10th Cir. 2018), dealt with tweets that the plaintiff had posted about his ex-
girlfriend, allegedly in violation of a no-contact order—not a speech code. Yeasin
is inapposite to this case, in which the Plaintiff-Appellant was charged with
violating a policy prohibiting speech, not conduct, and his speech was about a
matter of public concern rather than a personal relationship.

8
Dambrot v. Cent. Mich. Univ., 55 F.3d 1177 (6th Cir. 1995); Univ. of Cincinnati

Chapter of Young Am. for Liberty v. Williams, 12-cv-155, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS

80967 (S.D. Ohio Jun. 12, 2012); Smith v. Tarrant Cty. Coll. Dist., 694 F. Supp. 2d

610 (N.D. Tex. 2010); Coll. Republicans at S.F. St. Univ. v. Reed, 523 F. Supp. 2d

1005 (N.D. Cal. 2007); Roberts v. Haragan, 346 F. Supp. 2d 853 (N.D. Tex.

2004); Bair v. Shippensburg Univ., 280 F. Supp. 2d 357 (M.D. Pa. 2003); Booher

v. N. Ky. Univ. Bd. of Regents, No. 2:96-CV-135, 1998 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 11404

(E.D. Ky. July 21, 1998); Corry v. Leland Stanford Junior Univ., No. 740309 (Cal.

Super. Ct. Feb. 27, 1995) (slip op.); UWM Post, Inc. v. Bd. of Regents of the Univ.

of Wis., 774 F. Supp. 1163 (E.D. Wisc. 1991); Doe v. Univ. of Mich., 721 F. Supp.

852 (E.D. Mich. 1989).

While any constitutional question could, in theory, be construed so

narrowly—i.e., whether tasering mentally ill cyclists after pushing them from their

bicycles constitutes excessive force—as to find that the law was not clearly

established, it strains credulity to argue that UNM officials would not have known

it was impermissible to punish a medical student for a provocative social media

post on an issue of public concern.

B. The Fact that Plaintiff’s Speech Took Place Online Does Not Change
the Calculus

The District Court also erred in ignoring the fact that it has been well-

established law since 1997 that basic First Amendment principles apply to online

9
speech. See Reno v. Am. Civil Liberties Union, 521 U.S. 844 (1997) (striking down

portions of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) as vague). As the Supreme

Court explained more than twenty years ago in Reno, the Court’s traditional First

Amendment analysis applied to Congress’s attempt to regulate speech on the

internet. Id. at 874. Indeed, the Court struck the CDA down as a content-based

restriction on speech that lacked “the precision that the First Amendment requires

when a statute regulates the content of speech.” Id. In so holding, the Court

distinguished its precedent dealing with the broadcast media because the internet

was neither invasive nor scarce. Id. at 869–70. As the Court recognized, the

internet was instead an expressive media that allows “any person with a phone line

[to] become a town crier with a voice that resonates farther than it could from any

soapbox.” Id. at 870. In other words, online speech is entitled to the same level of

protection as speech made on the sidewalk or in a public park. The District Court

erred in ignoring this precedent insofar as it held that Plaintiff-Appellant’s speech

deserved less protection because it was made online instead of on campus.

II. The District Court Should Have Addressed the First Step of the
Qualified Immunity Analysis.

Particularly in light of the well-established case law on unconstitutional

campus speech policies, explained above, the lower court should have conducted a

complete qualified immunity analysis and addressed the First Amendment question

directly. Although the District Court had the discretion to address whether

10
Plaintiff-Appellant’s rights were “clearly established” at the time of his alleged

injury without deciding whether a constitutional violation took place, its refusal to

address the underlying constitutional issue perpetuates stagnation in the law and

increases the significant procedural barriers student plaintiffs face in enforcing

their constitutional rights, discussed in more detail below.

Qualified immunity protects government officials from liability for damages

“insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or

constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.” Harlow v.

Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 802 (1979). This personal immunity creates a high bar

for a student plaintiff to reach in seeking remedy for a constitutional injury because

“officials are liable not for all of their unconstitutional acts, but only for their

clearly unconstitutional acts ….” Michael G. Collins, Section 1983 Litigation in a

Nutshell 163 (5th ed. 2016) (emphasis added).

The Supreme Court has established a two-part test for qualified immunity:

(1) whether the facts establish violation of a constitutional right, and (2) whether

the right was “clearly established” at the time of the government actor’s conduct.

Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194, 201 (2001). In Saucier, the Court required lower

courts to answer both questions if granting an official qualified immunity,

reasoning that this sequence allows “the law’s elaboration from case to case ….

The law might be deprived of this explanation were a court simply to skip ahead

11
….” Id. at 201. And while the Court eliminated Saucier’s mandate in Pearson v.

Callahan, holding that courts may decide the law was not clearly established

without deciding whether a constitutional injury occurred, it still recognized that

following “the Saucier protocol is often beneficial.” 555 U.S. 223, 236 (2009).

Indeed, as an ever-growing number of jurists and scholars confirm, the

Saucier court’s concern for the development of constitutional law was well

founded. See Zadeh v. Robinson, 902 F.3d 483, 499–500 (5th Cir. 2018) (Willett,

J.) (concurring dubitante) (collecting cases and scholarship). When courts decide

that a constitutional right was not clearly established without opining on the scope

of the right itself, the contours of the law are not advanced or clarified by courts,

increasing the likelihood that the law will be no more clearly established for the

next plaintiff. 4

Judge Don Willett of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit aptly

explained the conundrum faced by civil rights litigants in a recent concurring

4
The Supreme Court has compounded the lack of clarity in the law by declining to
rule on the source or quantity of existing precedent necessary for a right to be
“clearly established.” See Carroll v. Carman, 135 S. Ct. 348, 350 (2014) (per
curiam) (assuming but not finding that a right could be clearly established based on
a single circuit court of appeals decision); Reichle v. Howards, 566 U.S. 658, 665–
66 (2012) (“Assuming arguendo that controlling Court of Appeals’ authority could
be a dispositive source of clearly established law in the circumstances of this case .
. . .”); Harlow, 457 U.S. at 818 n.32 (declining to decide whether the state of the
law should be evaluated by reference to decisions of the Supreme Court, appellate
courts, or district courts).

12
opinion, in which he wrote separately to register his “disquiet” over the modern

qualified immunity regime:

Doctrinal reform is arduous, often-Sisyphean work. And the

entrenched, judge-made doctrine of qualified immunity seems
Kevlar-coated, making even tweak-level tinkering doubtful. …
Forgoing a knotty constitutional inquiry makes for easier sledding.
But the inexorable result is “constitutional stagnation”—fewer courts
establishing law at all, much less clearly doing so. … Section 1983
meets Catch-22. Plaintiffs must produce precedent even as fewer
courts are producing precedent. Important constitutional questions
go unanswered precisely because those questions are yet
unanswered. … Heads defendants win, tails plaintiffs lose.
Zadeh, 902 F.3d at 498–99 (Willett, J.) (concurring dubitante).

The District Court here skipped to the second step of the qualified immunity

analysis based on the conclusion that “[t]here have been few cases dealing with the

right to regulate online speech” by public institutions of higher education. As

explained above, the lower court’s framing of the issue ignores decades of

precedent relevant to campus speech codes and the Supreme Court’s

admonishment that First Amendment rights are not treated differently because they

are exercised on the internet. It is particularly important in the context of

technology and social media that courts take the time to articulate how established

principles apply to modern forums. See id. at 499 (“Result: blurred constitutional

contours as technological innovation outpaces legal adaptation.”). This Court

should therefore reverse the District Court’s grant of qualified immunity and firmly

hold that Defendants violated Plaintiff’s clearly established First Amendment

13
rights when they applied the University of New Mexico’s facially unconstitutional

policies to punish him for social media posts on a matter of public concern.

III. Student Plaintiffs Already Face Significant Hurdles in Vindicating Their

Constitutional Rights in Court.

A. Injunctive and Declaratory Claims Are Frequently Mooted by

Graduation.

Grants of qualified immunity based on excessively narrow readings of

precedent inflict a specific and disproportionate harm on student populations, who

already face significant hurdles to reaching rulings that create precedent.

Students are a transient population, with a finite amount of time to seek

vindication of their civil rights. Most students at four-year nonprofit colleges

graduate after four years.5 The most vocal and active students are likely to be

upperclassmen, who, in turn, are likely to be graduating in two years or less.6 This

problem is exacerbated at community colleges, which are primarily two-year

institutions.

5
U.S. DEP’T OF EDUC., NAT’L CTR. FOR EDUC. STATISTICS, DIGEST OF EDUCATION
STATISTICS, TABLE 326.10, available at
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d18/tables/dt18_326.10.asp.
6
See Tyler J. Buller, Subtle Censorship: The Problem of Retaliation Against High
School Journalism Advisers and Three Ways to Stop It, 40 J.L. & EDUC. 609, 630
(2011) (“If one assumes that leadership positions are held by juniors or seniors, the
window for successful litigation shrinks to just one or two years before the injury
becomes moot.”).

14
 Meanwhile, as of September 2017, the median time it took a federal district

court to complete a trial during the prior year was 25.2 months.7 In the District of

New Mexico, from which this appeal originates, that median was 31.3 months.8

The net result is that a public college or university, which presumptively has ample

resources with which to file an appeal, is all but assured that graduation will moot

claims for injunctive and declaratory relief before appeals are exhausted.

Among the students who have seen their rights evaporate while waiting for

justice are student prayer leaders,9 objectors to student prayers,10 student

7
ADMIN. OFFICE OF U.S. COURTS, TABLE C-5: U.S. DISTRICT COURTS—MEDIAN
TIME INTERVALS FROM FILING TO DISPOSITION OF CIVIL CASES TERMINATED, BY
DISTRICT AND METHOD OF DISPOSITION, DURING THE 12-MONTH PERIOD ENDING
SEPTEMBER 30, 2017, available at
https://www.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/data_tables/jb_c5_0930.2017.pdf.
8
Id. at p. 4. The trial court decided the present case 28 months and 29 days after it
was filed. Hunt, No. 16-272 (D.N.M. filed Apr. 8, 2016; dismissed Sept. 6, 2018).
9
Corder v. Lewis Palmer Sch. Dist. No. 38, 566 F.3d 1219, 1225 (10th Cir. 2009)
(student forced to apologize for religious valedictory speech held to lack standing
to maintain declaratory and injunctive claims); Cole v. Oroville Union High Sch.,
228 F.3d 1092, 1098–99 (9th Cir. 2000) (finding First Amendment claims moot
where plaintiffs were prevented from giving religious speeches at graduation
ceremony).
10
Adler v. Duval Cty. Sch. Bd., 112 F.3d 1475, 1478 (11th Cir. 1997) (dismissing
as moot injunctive and declaratory claims from former students who objected to
inclusion of student-initiated prayer at graduation ceremonies).

15
journalists,11 ROTC students,12 valedictorians,13 students who wanted to

demonstrate cookware in their dorms,14 and numerous other high school students15

and college students.16 The only common thread linking these students is that they

graduated before their institutions could be held to account, and thus, before a

precedent that would limit the exercise of qualified immunity could be created.

That injunctive and declaratory claims are mooted by graduation provides an

incentive for schools to prolong litigation, even when—especially when—the

school’s conduct is constitutionally indefensible.

11
Bd. of Sch. Comm’rs v. Jacobs, 420 U.S. 128 (1975); Lane v. Simon, 495 F.3d
1182, 1186–87 (10th Cir. 2007); Husain v. Springer, 691 F. Supp. 2d 339, 340–41
(E.D.N.Y. 2009).
12
Sapp v. Renfroe, 511 F.2d 175, 175–76 (5th Cir. 1975) (finding challenge to
ROTC guidelines moot after graduation).
13
See, e.g., Corder, 566 F.3d at 1225; Cole, 228 F.3d at 1098–99.
14
Fox v. Bd. of Trs. of the State Univ., 42 F.3d 135, 139 (2d Cir. 1994) (dismissing
as moot injunctive and declaratory claims of students prevented from
demonstrating cookware in their dorms as part of sales pitch).
15
See, e.g., Jacobs, 420 U. S. at 128; Adler, 112 F.3d at 1478; Cole, 228 F.3d at
1098–99; Doe v. Madison Sch. Dist. No. 321, 177 F.3d 789, 798 (9th Cir. 1999);
Ceniceros v. Bd of Trs. of the San Diego Unified Sch. Dist., 106 F.3d 878, 879 n.1
(9th Cir. 1997) (plaintiff lost at trial but won on appeal, but had graduated in the
interim, mooting out all but nominal damage claims).
16
See, e.g., Lane v. Simon, 495 F.3d at 1186–87; Fox v. Bd. of Trs. of the State
Univ., 42 F.3d 135, 139 (2d Cir. 1994); Husain v. Springer, 691 F. Supp. 2d 339,
341–41 (E.D.N.Y. 2009).

16
 B. Injunctive and Declaratory Claims Are Frequently Mooted by Policy
Changes During Litigation.

Even when students have the “good fortune” to be victims of administrative

wrongdoing early enough in their education that they can maintain student status

throughout years of litigation, institutions acting pursuant to a challenged policy

can, and often do, change the challenged policy on the eve of trial. In such cases,

courts frequently find as moot the declaratory and injunctive claims that arose

under the prior policy, provided the court has some reason to believe the original

policy won’t be reinstated.17

Such policy changes can be entirely voluntary18 or imposed by statute,19 but

to be effective, they must be accompanied by evidence showing that “it is

17
See, e.g., Speech First, Inc. v. Schlissel, 333 F. Supp. 3d 700, 714 (E.D. Mich.
2018) (plaintiff’s First Amendment challenge to University of Michigan
harassment and bullying policies was moot because university changed them
“within a month of [plaintiff’s] initiation of this lawsuit”); Uzuegbunam v.
Preczewski, No. 1:16-cv-04658 (N.D. Ga. May 25, 2018) (finding as moot First
Amendment challenge to two policies that Georgia Gwinnett College revised “after
Plaintiffs filed suit against Defendants”).
18
See, e.g., Husain v. Springer, 494 F.3d 108, 120 (2d Cir. 2007) (injunctive claim
against school cancelling student election due to student media coverage found
moot after election policy changed); Boston’s Children First v. Boston Sch.
Comm., 240 F. Sup. 2d 318, 322–23 (D. Mass. 2003) (finding as moot request for
injunctive relief prohibiting race-conscious school assignment program when
plaintiffs had not sought reclassification under replacement race-blind program),
aff’d sub nom. Anderson v. City of Boston, 375 F.3d 71 (1st Cir. 2004).
19
Smith v. Univ. of Wash. Law Sch., 233 F.3d 1188, 1195 (9th Cir. 2000) (finding
trial court had properly dismissed as moot requests for injunctive and declaratory
relief against race-conscious admissions policy that state legislature had
subsequently altered by statute).

17
‘absolutely clear that the allegedly wrongful behavior could not be reasonably

expected to recur.’”20 While not every school is willing to meet that threshold,21 it

is entirely within the school’s control to do so. Amicus FIRE has, on more than one

occasion, witnessed this very kind of judicially inspired revelation in schools that

have violated student rights.22 That creates yet another incentive for schools to drag

out litigation as long as possible: Even if it appears that the student will get a trial

before graduation, the school always has the option to simply walk away from

declaratory and injunctive claims by changing its policy and making a statement

disavowing the former policy.23

20
Parents Involved in Cmty. Sch. v. Seattle Sch. Dist. No. 1, 551 U.S. 701, 719
(2007) (citing Friends of Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Env’t Serv. (TOC), Inc., 528 U.S.
167, 189 (2000).
21
See, e.g., DeJohn, 537 F.3d 301at 309 (rejecting defendant’s claim that
injunctive relief was moot where defendant could re-institute original policy after
litigation ended).
22
See, e.g., Roberts, 346 F. Supp. at 857 (granting mootness dismissal of claim
against enforced speech code policy because university replaced it with an “interim
policy” during lawsuit); DeJohn, 537 F.3d at 309 (rejecting mootness claim by
defendant college that abandoned policy during lawsuit without making adequate
showing the policy would not be reinstated).
23
Of course, surviving mootness is not the end of the story. It is possible for a case
to have non-moot injunctive claims but ultimately not be entitled to injunctive
relief. See Freedom from Religion Found. v. Concord Cmty. Sch., 240 F. Supp. 3d
914, 919–20, 294–25 (N.D. Ind. 2017) (refusing to dismiss as moot injunctive
claims against religious school plays where the play format had subsequently
changed and school had not clearly indicated it would never return to that format,
but also denying a permanent injunction where plaintiff had indicated it would
never perform the specific shows in question).

18
 While judicial economy requires that the government always be permitted to

voluntarily correct its errors, the net result is that, by avoiding precedent, schools

are empowered to repeatedly attempt to violate student rights, merely withdrawing

a policy when they’re caught only to reinstate it, or a substantially similar policy,

at a later date. Again, amicus FIRE has, on more than one occasion, seen this

pattern, too.24

In light of these obstacles to reaching a ruling, taking a narrow reading of

precedent during a qualified immunity analysis involving student rights

undermines the purpose of qualified immunity. By the time a single student

manages to win a lawsuit, there are typically dozens of others who have raised the

same objections, sought the same relief, and were forced to abandon that pursuit

either upon graduation or after a policy change on the eve of litigation. That single

result must be read broadly enough to encompass the dozens of students with valid

claims that did not survive the mootness gauntlet.

24
E.g., at Pennsylvania’s Shippensburg University, which settled a speech code
case in 2004 only to attempt to enforce another unconstitutional code in 2008; and
California’s Citrus College, which repeated the pattern in 2003 and 2013,
respectively. See generally Greg Lukianoff & Adam Goldstein, Speech Code
Hokey Pokey: How Campus Speech Codes Could Rebound, THE VOLOKH
CONSPIRACY, Sept. 12, 2018, at https://reason.com/volokh/2018/09/12/speech-
code-hokey-pokey-how-campus-speec.

19
 CONCLUSION

Campus speech codes have been repeatedly defeated in court in an almost

unbroken string of legal precedent stretching back nearly thirty years. Despite the

clarity of the legal precedent, however, censorship of student expression on our

nation’s public campuses continues to run rampant. If the doctrine of qualified

immunity means that new constitutional precedent cannot develop in the absence

of cases with identical or near-identical fact patterns, the development of

constitutional law will stagnate and students’ First Amendment rights will remain

insecure. We respectfully urge this Court to overturn the District Court’s grant of

qualified immunity in this case.

Dated: February 8, 2019

Respectfully submitted,

Ilya Shapiro
Counsel of Record
Trevor Burrus
CATO INSTITUTE
1000 Mass. Ave. N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20001
(202) 842-0200
[email protected]
[email protected]

20
Samantha Harris
Brynne S. Madway
FOUNDATION FOR INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS IN EDUCATION
510 Walnut Street, Suite 1250
Philadelphia, PA 19106
(215) 717-3473
[email protected]
[email protected]

Counsel for Amici Curiae

21
 CERTIFICATE OF COMPLIANCE

(1) This brief complies with the type-volume limitation of Fed. R. App. P.

29(a)(5) because this brief contains 5168 words, excluding the parts of the

brief exempted by Fed. R. App. P. 32(f).

(2) This brief complies with the typeface requirements of Fed. R. App. P.

32(a)(5) and the type style requirements of Fed. R. App. P. 32(a)(6) because

this brief has been prepared in a proportionally spaced typeface using

Microsoft Office Word 2003 in 14-point Times New Roman font.

Dated: February 8, 2019

By:

Ilya Shapiro
Counsel of Record for Amici Curiae
CATO INSTITUTE
1000 Mass. Ave. N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20001
(202) 842-0200
[email protected]

22
 CERTIFICATE OF DIGITAL SUBMISSION

I hereby certify that with respect to the foregoing:

(1) All required privacy redactions have been made in accordance with 10th Cir.

R. 25.5;

(2) The hard copies to be submitted to the court are exact copies of the version

submitted electronically; and

(3) The electronic submission was scanned for viruses with the most recent

version of a commercial virus scanning program, ESET Endpoint Antivirus

for Mac, Version 6.7.654.0, updated February 6, 2019, and is free of viruses.

Dated: February 8, 2019

By:

Ilya Shapiro
Counsel of Record for Amici Curiae
CATO INSTITUTE
1000 Mass. Ave. N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20001
(202) 842-0200
[email protected]

23
 CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE

I HEREBY CERTIFY that I electronically filed the foregoing with the Clerk

of the Court for the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit by using

the appellate CM/ECF system on February 8, 2019, which will automatically send

notification to the counsel of record for the parties.

Dated: February 8, 2019

By:

Ilya Shapiro
Counsel of Record for Amici Curiae
CATO INSTITUTE
1000 Mass. Ave. N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20001
(202) 842-0200
[email protected]

24