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Officials at the University of Texas-Arlington have decided to overturn their decision to charge conservative students $28,000 in "security" fees for two small events the students held.
The decision came after the ADF wrote to Arlington officials asking that those charges be dropped.
The school was accused of violating the First Amendment rights of the student Turning Point USA organization by charging the fees.
Caleb Dalton, a spokesman for ADF, explained, "Charging more than $28,000 for two small events is prohibitively expensive speech – not free speech. Officials at the University of Texas at Arlington charged TPUSA outrageous security fees simply because they feared how others might react to TPUSA’s speech.
"This is exactly the type of suppression the First Amendment forbids. Implementing such security fees is what's known as a 'heckler's veto,' an action which unconstitutionally allows those who oppose certain speech to censor it simply by protesting or threatening to protest. We commend UTA officials for quickly rescinding these unlawful charges, and for securing these events in the first place, but we urge them to take the next right step, which is to amend their policies to protect every student’s freedom of speech so that this never happens again."
WND reported when the disagreement arose that the school simply decided it wanted $28,000 for security for the student group's events and charged that, without obtaining permission.
The letter to the school warned that the excessive fees violated the student group's First Amendment rights.
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The report explained the background. When TPUSA was holding an event for a speaker to address about 50 people, there was a discussion over the costs of security.
"TPUSA Vice President Carlos Turcios e-mailed the police sergeant asking for a quote for two officers for three hours, and the sergeant responded saying the rates were variable, but averaged $72.82 per hour per officer. Turcios and university representatives never agreed on the number of officers or that TPUSA would pay for any number of officers the university decided to send to the event."
After the fact, the university billed the students for $26,807 for "staff."
Then another bill for $1,844 appeared for a later event attended by about 20 students.
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