Leadership Institute, TPUSA Chapter Members File Lawsuit Against University of New Mexico
The Leadership Institute, alongside student members of the Turning Point USA chapter at the University of New Mexico (UNM), filed a federal lawsuit against the university on Tuesday, accusing the school of engaging in “viewpoint and content discrimination.”
The lawsuit alleges that UNM officials told the TPUSA chapter at the school that they would not receive approval to host a speaking event featuring Riley Gaines unless the members paid nearly $7,500 for security. According to the plaintiffs, school officials are permitted to impose security fees on student organizations based on a “non-exhaustive list” of arbitrary factors; however, the organizations argue the fee is “facially unconstitutional, as ‘[t]he First Amendment prohibits the vesting of such unbridled discretion in a government official.'”
Gaines, a former Division I swimmer and employee at the Leadership Institute, has visited various college campuses around the country to speak primarily about safeguarding women’s sports. The former swimmer began speaking out against the inclusion of transgender-identifying athletes competing in female leagues after she competed against transgender-identifying swimmer, Lia Thomas, in the final year of her athletic college career.
Since speaking out publicly about her experience, not only competing against Thomas but also being forced to share a locker room with the biological male, Gaines has faced an onslaught of backlash from transgender activists and the LGBTQ community. Most notably, Gaines claimed to have been assaulted and was barricaded in a room by activists for three hours while speaking to the TPUSA chapter at San Francisco State University, which has since suspended its investigation into the assault.
Timothy Stump, a defendant named in the lawsuit and the Lieutenant of the UNM Police Department, told the TPUSA chapter at UNM that the school would not have charged such a fee to a student organization merely streaming the Barbie movie, for example, because the university would not be “worried about the Barbie movie.”
According to the lawsuit, UNM officials “determined—because of the nature of the event and ‘consistent’ with how the university had assessed conservative speaking events in the past—that thirty-three police officers, including arresting officers, would be necessary at or near the event that night.”
Because of this, the plaintiffs argue that the university’s officials engaged in “viewpoint and content discrimination when they required Plaintiffs to bear the cost of security based on the officials’ subjective assessment of the crowd’s potential reaction to Ms. Gaines’ speech.”
“UNM did not even try to hide its discrimination when it admitted that it was charging excessive security fees to TP-UNM and LI based on the ‘individual,’ Ms. Gaines, who speaks bravely every day about her experience competing against a biological man and the need to save women’s sports,” Southeastern Legal Foundation (SLF), which is representing the plaintiffs, Executive Director Kimberly Hermann said.
The parties additionally accuse a UNM policy regulating speech as “unconstitutional on its face,” because it demands that speech be “reasonable” and “viewpoint-neutral.”
According to the lawsuit, the policy violates the First Amendment by giving “university officials [the] authority to impose unconstitutional, content-based restrictions on speech.”
When asked to comment on the lawsuit, Riley Gaines told Turning Point USA, “Try as it might, UNM can’t use scare tactics like high-security fees to deter me from speaking. The university’s attempt to burden students with these fees—without applying the same fees to other groups—is obvious viewpoint discrimination.”
