“You had permission to put it down; I have permission to get rid of it,” he said.
Fresno State students Bernadette Tasy and Jesus Herrera, involved in a national anti-abortion group called Students for Life of America, will get $1,000 in damages, while $15,000 will go to Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative nonprofit focusing on religious freedom, which defended the students in court.
California Fresno State professor Greg Thatcher will also undergo two hours of First Amendment training by the organization.
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Fresno State Students for Life planned to write messages in chalk outside the university’s library. After getting approval from the university, the group wrote their messages; examples ranged from “You CAN be pregnant & successful” and “Unborn lives matter” to “Women need love, NOT abortion.”
Shortly before finishing, the lawsuit claims, Greg Thatcher, an assistant professor of public health, approached the group and said they had to keep their messages to the university’s free speech area.
According to Bernadette Tasy, one of the organizers with the group and a plaintiff in the lawsuit, Thatcher then said he would be back to remove the messages. Tasy says he returned with a group of students and they attempted to remove the group’s messages.
“You had permission to put it down; I have permission to get rid of it,” he says in the video.
Tasy claims the students also took some of their chalk and wrote “pro-abortion messages” on the same sidewalk.
The messages included “My body, my choice” and “Your body, your choice. I (heart) you.”
The lawsuit alleges that Thatcher got students from his 8 a.m. class to help remove the anti-abortion messages.
In a statement to CNN, Joseph Castro, president of California State University, Fresno, said the school’s policy on free speech is clear.
“Free speech on campus is not limited to a ‘free speech zone’ or any other narrowly defined area,” he said. “Those disagreeing with the students’ message have a right to their own speech, but they do not have the right to erase or stifle someone else’s speech under the guise of their own right to free speech.”
After the incident, the students contacted lawyers at Alliance Defending Freedom, a non-profit Christian legal group, which took up the case.
“The crux of this case is a very simple message. Public university professors should be encouraging free speech,” said lead attorney, Travis Barham, one of the lawyers from the group, “not erasing it from existence. You will be held accountable.”
