http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/artic ... E_ID=53737

Organization sues school after being denied access to facilities
1/12/07

A lawsuit has been filed against a California college by a law firm representing the Minuteman Project alleging censorship after school officials denied the group permission to use its facilities for a town hall meeting.

Lawyer Michael Sands of the Pro Family Law Center said the activist group asked to use the school's facility for a town hall meeting before the 2006 election, but was denied because the school said it didn't allow its buildings to be used by "special interest or advocacy groups, nor for the advancement of specific candidates for public office."

However, after the request had been denied by Jamillah Moore, Interim Superintendent of Compton Community College, the Minuteman Project, which wanted to address the public issue of illegal immigration and the significant impact it has on the city of Compton and the surrounding cities, discovered several other advocacy groups had been granted permission for meetings there.

"Once you open up a school to one special interest group, you have to provide equal access," Sands told WND. "They (school officials) could be putting forth some sort of agenda. They have to open up their facilities to all other groups who properly apply for permission."

Documents obtained by the Minuteman Project leaders after they made a Public Records Act request showed the school already had been used for a "Farrakan Event," a "Multi-cultural Youth Peace Summit/Registration Drive" and "The Black Student Union and Muhammad's Mosque Peacemakers."

The complaint alleges that the school, through its Board of Trustees, denied The Minuteman Project equal access to the use of their school facilities based on the content of the speech intended to be engaged in by The Minuteman Project.

"It is alleged that by allowing access to Compton Community College's facilities to these organizations/groups, Compton Community College is required by law to provide equal access to The Minuteman Project pursuant to the Equal Access Act and general First Amendment principles," the complaint said.

Sands told WND the college probably will raise a number of "governmental immunity" issues as usually happens in such cases, "but the facts are pretty clear," he said. "The Minuteman Project can't be denied equal access."

"Compton Community College has engaged in content-based discrimination in the denial of The Minuteman Project's application," Sands said. "By granting access to groups such as Muhammad's Mosque Peacemakers, Compton Community College has become a limited public forum, thereby precluding them from denying groups like The Minuteman Project equal access to … their facilities based on the content of their speech."

Marvin Stewart, director of community relations for the group, said contrary to the school's assumptions, "the neutral panel of speakers intended to speak at the Town Hall Meeting diminished any appearance of endorsement of a specific candidate for public office and/or view on a political issue."

The complaint seeks monetary damages and an injunction against the school to protect the organization's constitutional rights.

The Minuteman Project concerns itself with issues of the U.S. border, its protection and sanctity, and recently has been lobbying for pardons for two U.S. Border Patrol agents who were charged, convicted and given prison terms of 11 years and 12 years for shooting a drug-smuggling suspect in the buttocks as he fled across the U.S.-Mexico border.

Project founder Jim Gilchrist also told WND that his members are very concerned with incursions into the United States such as the one that happened recently in Arizona, where U.S. National Guard troops actually retreated in the face of oncoming – and armed – attackers coming from Mexico.

"Ultimately, by the year 2025 at the current rate of invasion – and it is an invasion – there will be more illegal aliens occupying U.S. territory than legal citizen votes," he said. "The consequences are indescribably staggering. It will no longer be a United States."

He said the society will be broken into factions based on culture and language.

Had the Founding Fathers of the United States operated this way, "we'd never have become a United States of America. We'd have been piecemealed to other continental conquerors such as Spain, Asia, Russia and France," he said.

The organization has faced opposition to free speech on other campuses too.

Protesters storm stage at Columbia University (WND photo)

Because of what nearly reached the level of riot at an event at Columbia University last fall, Gilchrist, author Jerome Corsi and board member Marvin Stewart have filed statements with the school's lawyer encouraging him to conduct an investigation of the situation.

Protesters there taunted speakers with the "n-word" and eventually halted the event completely. Two people lunged onto the stage in front of the podium and body-slammed it to the floor, according to witnesses.

Corsi, a WND columnist, was waiting backstage and was scheduled to follow Gilchrist by reading excerpts from their co-authored book, "Minutemen: The Battle to Secure America's Borders."

Corsi described the student's reception of the event at Columbia as "what was developing into a riot on the stage."