The Arizona Students’ Association claimed First Amendment retaliation arising from a suspension of funding by the Arizona Board of Regents three years ago and on Wednesday the 9th Circuit ruled in their favor.
The 9th Circuit panel of judges held in Arizona Students’ Association v. Arizona Board of Regents, that “the first amendment affords the broadest protection to political expression in order to assure unfettered interchange of ideas for the bringing about of political and social changes desired by the people.”
The district court dismissed the Arizona Students’ Association (ASA) First Amendment retaliation case against the Board. The ASA’s appealed
The ruling reads in part:
The panel affirmed in part and reversed in part the dismissal of a complaint brought pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 by the Arizona Students’ Association against the Arizona Board of Regents alleging First Amendment retaliation in connection with the Regents’ decision to suspend its collection and remittance of the Arizona Students’ Association fees and then to modify its fee collection policies.
The panel agreed with the district court that the Eleventh Amendment barred any claim by the Students’ Association for retrospective relief, including money damages, against the Board of Regents. The panel held, however, that the Students’ Association’s claim for prospective injunctive relief and related declaratory relief was not barred by sovereign immunity, provided such relief was sought against individual members of the Board. The panel held that the district court abused its discretion when it failed to grant the Students’ Association leave to amend its complaint to conform with the requirements of Ex Parte Young, 209 U.S. 123 (1908). The panel directed the district court, on remand, to afford the Students’ Association a reasonable opportunity to file an amended complaint.
The panel held that the Students’ Association adequately alleged that it had engaged in the kinds of core political speech that trigger the First Amendment’s highest levels of protection. The panel stated that the Board of Regents had no affirmative obligation to collect or remit the Students’ Association fees, but having done so for fifteen years at no cost, the Board of Regents could not deprive the Students’ Association of the benefit of its fee collection and remittance services in retaliation for the Students’ Association’s exercise of its First Amendment rights. The panel held that the collection and remittance of funds is a valuable government benefit, and a change in policy undertaken for retaliatory purposes that results in the deprivation of those funds implicates the First Amendment. Read the ruling here
In 2012, a Goldwater Institute investigative report found that the Arizona Students Association, a private non-profit student group funded by $2 tuition surcharges collected from public university students each semester, was directing significant resources to political activism, including a $120,000 donation to Prop 204, a proposed $1 billion state sales tax increase on the November 2012 ballot.
The Arizona Board of Regents, a body which oversees Arizona’s three public universities, voted to end the policy of mandatory tuition surcharges to the Arizona Students Association. The Regents’ policy change did not eliminate funding for the Students Association altogether. Beginning in the fall of 2013, students were given the choice to “opt in” to pay the fee.
The Students Association sued the Regents over the policy change, hoping to reinstate the mandatory and automatically collected surcharge once again.
The Goldwater Institute represented five students who joined the lawsuit to defend the Regents’ decision.