"Montana State University Student Settles Free Speech Lawsuit" Related to "Sorority's 'Insistence' on Preferred Pronouns"

From Keila Szpaller (Daily Montanan):

In January, Daria Danley sued MSU, its president and director of the Office of Institutional Equity, along with the commissioner of higher education. Danley argued a no-contact order MSU had imposed on her without an end date or due process infringed on her rights.

In the settlement agreement filed last week in U.S. District Court of Montana in Helena, the Bozeman campus agreed to end its no-contact order, and Danley agreed to dismiss the case….

Danley filed the lawsuit after she questioned her sorority leader about using preferred pronouns, and about an alleged stalking by another sorority student who is LGBTQ,Free the complaint said.

As a result, MSU punished Danley for "hate speech" and imposed the no-contact order, which prohibited her from attending sorority events or entering a building where her alleged harasser was present, the lawsuit said.

For more on plaintiff's allegations, see her brief in support of her motion for a preliminary injunction; for MSU's response, see its brief.

Comments

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Momentous Moments In The Law Of Expression:

The New York Times: Florida seems to be on a partisan censorship binge, when not flouting academic freedom.

The Washington Post: The Fox-Dominion Systems lawsuit is becoming a real-time lesson in defamation law.

Prof. Eugene Volokh: Hey, you hear the one about the sorority house lesbians and the poor, misunderstood, persecuted “traditional values” coed?

[Krayt]

What goes around comes around. If one side weren’t full of glib people trying to help banning hasrrassment escape contained domains of education and business, using the power of government to censor opposition, would we be having this asinine over-reaction from the right?

Anything stirring up the bees in their bonnet. Or anyone, I should say?

[Dr. Ed 2]

I do not think it is an overreaction — an overreaction would be bulldozing the buildings and plowing salt into the soil. Although, as to ZooMass, maybe not that much of an overreaction…

[Dr. Ed 2]

“The fellow sorority member “routinely made inappropriate sexual comments in the presence of other AGD members,” and she repeatedly asked Danley to accompany her to her apartment despite Danley’s rejections, the lawsuit alleges.

“Another member of the chapter warned Plaintiff Danley never to be alone with (the sorority member), as that member had observed (her) attempting to take advantage of women when they were intoxicated,” the lawsuit said.”

https://dailymontanan.com/2023/01/13/montana-state-university-student-alleges-free-speech-violations/

Is that conduct you can defend, Kirkland?

How about if a male did it? Would you defend it then?

Sexual assault is sexual assault, and to ignore that when the perp is LBGTQ and whatever is itself homophobic…

[NOVA Lawyer]

Dr. Ed,

Those are allegations. And nobody is defending the alleged behavior, if it occurred. Improving your reading comprehension would help you direct your outrage at appropriate targets.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Call me jaded, but I have no doubt that it actually did occur.

Sometime I will tell you about the last Smith College dance I went to.

[BrotherMovesOn]

Please … don’t.

[David Nieporent]

Telling us about the last Davos conference you attended would be equally believable.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

I’m going to have to rebuke you for your sexism in using the word “coed” as a noun, since “the word doesn’t belong in our age of Title IX.”

https://www.chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/vanished-from-campus-language-the-coed?cid2=gen_login_refresh&cid=gen_sign_in

Our best colleges and universities won’t tolerate such misogynistic languge. Only on-the-spectrum white male clingers use such degrading terminology.

[J. Denny]

What about it right ?

[Frank Drackman]

Cat Fight! Mrrrowwwwwww!!!!

[Frank Drackman]

and “Daria” should be suing her parents for naming her after a Beavis & Butthead character.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daria_Morgendorffer

[Dr. Ed 2]

“LGBTQ,Free”

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.

I *think* I know what the “free” means, but grammatically it means the exact opposite, e.g. “Sugar Free”, “Gluten Free”, etc….

34 years ago, I refused to kick a lesbian student out of the dorm (for merely being a lesbian) and my attitude was “unless she’s bothering someone who doesn’t want to be bothered — male *or* female — she has every right to remain.”

And now we have THIS…

I’m not surprised that it’s Montana — some of the most conservative states have some of the most politically correct divisions of student affairs — in part because people aren’t expecting it.

I’d love to know what National had to say about this — all the sororities have national headquarters.

[ObviouslyNotSpam]

That didn’t look like a typo to you? Interesting.

(It doesn’t appear in the linked filings.)

[Dr. Ed 2]

Spend 20 years at UMass and you won’t even think about the possibility it might be a typo.

Read Arnold Silver’s _Shortchangers_ sometime…

[Sarcastr0]

That’s a satire, don’t appeal to that as truth to defend your idiocy about a typo.

[Dr. Ed 2]

He wrote it about a real incident at Planet UMass….

[shawn_dude]

I spent 20 seconds Googling something I had never seen before and found zero references to “LGBTQ,Free.” The comma was a big clue that this was an error. But I did find a lot of “LGBTQ-Free” in relation to homophobic bans on LGBTQ people in Poland. So there’s that.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Actually, I *do* now know what National thought about this:

“At MSU’s suggestion, the sorority evicted her, the complaint said. Danley applied to the sorority’s national headquarters for reinstatement, and her request was granted, the complaint said.”

And it appears that NATIONAL shut down the chapter, not the university (who usually does it). This is very interesting, one has to ask why the chapter was shut down because National usually doesn’t shut a sorority chapter down — or at least didn’t back when I was involved in this sort of thing.

As a janitor. Yes, janitors get to worry about extremely drunken women on the far side of midnight. (A janitor would have gotten 4 hours of overtime for having to get out of bed…)

If she has National’s support, and has a few professors to write recommendations for her, she should be OK — but I’d still worry about MSU “getting even” with her next year.

[John F. Carr]

It is tempting to troll liberals by posting “LGBQT Free zone” signs at random places where private signs are allowed or tolerated when about politically correct topics.

But I’m not really that motivated.

The “free” is just a cut and paste error. She claimed she was being stalked by one of the alphabet people.

[Dr. Ed 2]

And you are not an 18-year-old freshman, either.

One of the things that I tried to point out to the zealots who wanted to have a banned words list at UMass was that telling an 18-year-old not to do something was the absolute best way I knew of getting him/her/it to do it.

There’s *so* much low-hanging fruit in academia right now…

[shawn_dude]

Is it tempting to post “Black free zone” in the same places? Jew free?

“But I’m not really that motivated.”

Ah, the blessing of lazy bigotry.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

The cowardly, fringe hypocrites who operate this blog and the collection of disaffected, low-quality commenters they have cultivated deserve each other.

This is the best conservatives can muster. Lesbians, drag queens, transgendered restrooms, Muslims, pedophile rings, and always the poor, persecuted white clinger angle. Thank goodness for the modern American culture war and its predictable fate for our vestigial right-wingers.

[The original jack burton]

“Sir, this is a Wendy’s drive-thru…”

[hoppy025]

As long as LGBTQ are allowed to play these games, they will. The rest of us have to stop humoring them, and telling them to act normal or they’ll be shunned and ideally, hospitalized.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Who do you think is running the hospitals?!?

[hoppy025]

All of our society needs a reset.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Trump/DeSantis 2024….

[shawn_dude]

Authoritarians know better than to partner with someone looking to take their job. Why do you think Putin uses the looooongest table he can find?

It’ll be Trump/MTG or DeSantis/Some-random-nobody-who-wont-steal-the-limelight.