The University of Maryland cannot block students from holding an event on 7 October to mourn those killed in Gaza, a federal judge ruled on Tuesday, allowing students to move forward with it.
Students with the school’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) had reserved a room in July to host the event. In August, school leaders met with them to share concerns about the event and pressure they had been receiving to cancel it. On 1 September, the school’s president announced he was canceling all student-sponsored events on 7 October and would only allow school-sponsored events.
The school cited security concerns in support of its decision and said school officials had received death threats as news of the event spread.
The decision to cancel the event probably violated the students’ first amendment rights, Peter Messitte, a US district judge appointed by Bill Clinton, wrote in a ruling on Tuesday. The school could have also taken other steps short of canceling the event to bolster security, including hiring additional personnel or even law enforcement.
“The decision of the University to revoke SJP’s reservation was clearly neither viewpoint- nor content-neutral. It came about for reasons that the Constitution simply does not countenance: fear of disruption, and anger of opponents. Again, the case authority emphatically rejects these reasons,” he wrote.
Darryll Pines, the University’s president, said in an email that the school would respect the court’s decision.
Abel Amene, the co-secretary of the school chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, also praised the decision.
“We are relieved to have the chance to actually put on this event and commemorate not only all the deaths that occurred on October 7, including hundreds of Palestinians during bombings in Gaza on October 7, but the tens of thousands of people that have been killed since that date,” he told the Washington Post.
The legal battle in Maryland is unlikely to be the last first amendment test on a college campus as several schools have implemented new restrictions on protests after contentious protests rocked campuses last spring.
