BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) – Ann Coulter is now at the center of a civil rights lawsuit filed Monday against the University of California, Berkeley by students who say the school is violating their right to free speech by canceling the conservative pundit’s speaking event on campus this week.
The lawsuit marks the latest twist in a high-profile debate over whether Coulter will be allowed to speak Thursday at UC Berkeley, which has been known for decades as a bastion of free speech and tolerance and the birthplace of the 1960s Free Speech Movement.
A legal team led by Harmeet Dhillon, a San Francisco attorney who is also a prominent California Republican, filed the case on behalf of the Berkeley College Republicans, who invited Coulter, and the Young America’s Foundation, which is helping to organize and finance the event.
“Berkeley is well known as a place where ideas used to be welcome. At least on the conservative side. At least until this recent election,” Dhillon told a news conference after filing the lawsuit at the U.S. District Court in San Francisco. “The university is required to give equal access to speakers of different viewpoints.”
The lawsuit says that Berkeley is trying “to restrict and stifle the speech of conservative students whose voices fall beyond the campus political orthodoxy.”