ATLANTA — Alliance Defense Fund attorneys filed a civil rights lawsuit today against university officials at Georgia Institute of Technology for violation of their students’ First Amendment right to free speech.
“Universities are supposed to be the marketplace of ideas,” said ADF Senior Legal Counsel David French, who heads ADF’s Center for Academic Freedom. “Despite that, officials at Georgia Tech are enforcing draconian speech codes that prohibit any kind of speech they deem to be ‘intolerant.’”
Compounding the problem, Georgia Tech officials implemented a scheme aimed at indoctrinating the campus community in what those officials promote as the correct interpretation of holy texts on issues related to homosexual behavior. Through the program, called “Safe Space,” university officials promote the beliefs of religions that favor homosexual behavior and denigrate religions that oppose homosexual behavior (
www.safespace.gatech.edu/manual9.html).
“We find it intriguing that the ACLU hasn’t shown up this time, considering their stated concern over the so-called ‘separation of church and state,’” said French. “The university is clearly overstepping its bounds in interpreting religious texts and then pushing its own view upon a religiously diverse community on campus. This is indeed an unconstitutional establishment of religion that clearly violates students’ First Amendment rights to free speech and religious liberty.”
ADF attorneys filed the lawsuit,
Sklar v. Clough, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia. A copy of the complaint can be read at
www.telladf.org/UserDocs/GeorgiaTechComplaint.pdf.
ADF’s Center for Academic Freedom was formed in 2005 to combat the violation of the constitutional free speech and religious liberty rights of Christian students on public university campuses.
ADF is a legal alliance defending the right to hear and speak the Truth through strategy, training, funding, and litigation.
www.telladf.org