Oberlin Colleges loses appeal in suit filed by local bakery
insidehighered.com
insidehighered.com
This is even worse considering these colleges receive public funding, these lawsuits are paid for by the tax payer one way or another. It makes fiscal and moral sense to bar funding to such institutions.
Nothing good ever came from admitting the world is round, or letting women vote.
Don't get me started on the heresy of orbital mechanics...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibson%27s_Bakery_v._Oberlin_C...
Basically the owner tried to stop a crime (shoplifting and underage drinking), and his reward was property damage (phone getting smashed), being physically assaulted, and losing large amounts of business after school administrators used their money and platform to "financially sanction" their business.
> “It’s the second action that really worries me. Basically, the court held that since Oberlin authorizes the student senate, subsidizes it, provides a supervisor, and allows it to post its documents on school property, it is legally responsible for the student senate’s speech,” Sachs tweeted.
> While Sachs notes the dean erred in handing out the fliers, “the senate resolution issue feels much more complicated and nothing to celebrate.” The ruling, he suggests, implies that colleges must scrutinize the speech they provide a platform for and “have a legal duty to censor.”
Isn't the solution to clarify that the student senate is not an official body of the college and that its views do not represent the college's views? Require a disclaimer at the bottom of every student senate email, ask the senate to find its own funding, and the college ought to be in a much more defensible position legally. And as a side effect, a student senate which is financially and organizationally independent of the college will be a much better venue for real student free speech.
I don't even think that's necessary. Sachs is leaving out a lot of the context/facts in this case... my understanding is that what made the university liable for the student senate's actions is that the university administration started endorsing the position taken by the senate in various ways, for example by suspending business with the bakery in response to the senate's resolution.
The consequences of the 2016 election will last at least a generation.
Are Universities and corporations responsible for the speech, views, and research of their professors and employees? This absolutely chills speech; public groups must now censor the actions of their individual members or find themselves liable legally for their ostensibly protected 1st Amendment rights.
If you are a free speech absolutist or even believe in culture of free speech, which includes factually incorrect or unpopular speech, this is a troubling ruling.
"This absolutely chills speech; public groups must now censor the actions of their individual members or find themselves liable legally for their ostensibly protected 1st Amendment rights."
If the admin hadn't joined in an official capacity handing out flyers, canceling contracts, and posting libel to their own website there would be no case about the students protesting. Workers are still free to do this on their own time, but the second they do it as a part of their work, then the public group should be held responsible as that group has now made a public policy decision.
From an institutional perspective, if you don't believe in policing your adult student's speech, or actions, are you legally liable. With this ruling you are perversely, in a manner antithetical to free discourse, and freedom of association, to police people and their politics.
Imagine if South African businesses sued Universities for their boycott of Apartheid era South African goods. Or if the Claiborne Hardware Stores succeeded in suing the NAACP for damages as a result of their boycott in 1960s Mississippi.
The aforementioned are widely considered virtuous; they were on the "right side of history" but remember the First Amendment also protects those lacking scruples and virtues too.
This is factually incorrect, as per the above comment as well as other coverage of these events. Oberlin administrators, acting in an official capacity for the university, also made libelous statements towards the bakery. That's what they're being sued for, not the speech of their students.
Oberlin believed their students and adopted a position inconsistent with the facts (as established by a court), backing the wrong horse isn't malicious as much as a miscalculation. Free speech means you have the right to be wrong.
Gibson's won an award of 30+ million, a punishment disproportionate to their damages, an outsized judgement which purpose is to chill political speech.
Making false accusations against someone, and encouraging people to boycott their business on account of that false accusation is definitely malicious. The purpose of the law is to disincentivize, or "chill" illegal activities like this. This isn't chilling support for any particular candidate or policy, this is chilling people from making false accusations of racism and encouraging people to boycott businesses on account of those false accusations.
Slander and libel are not, and have never been, a necessary component of Free Speech.
Corporations have been liable for the behavior of their employees when acting in their official capacity, for ages. How is this surprising? Otherwise, software professionals like you and I would be personally liable for bugs that harm others.
The misbehaving college employees should have declared (or should have been required to declare by the college) that their actions were in an individual capacity, not as a representative of the college, and absorbed the full penalty of the ruling as individuals as a consequence of their actions.
That is incorrect. The tortfeasor is always liable. In other words, there may be ways to ALSO hold the employer liable, but the person who was actually negligent and caused the harm is ALWAYS liable. You can sue the pizza delivery guy - he hit you - or you can sue the restaurant, or both.
Now, you’re not going to get sued personally over a bug, probably, but that’s because there’s no need and it wouldn’t get plaintiff any more money. That said, there are various reasons why you might be named, perhaps some insurance policy issue, or jurisdictional shenanigans, or whatever.
The wikipedia entry has better details on the case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibson%27s_Bakery_v._Oberlin_C...