PITTSBURGH - A pro-Palestine student group at the University of Pittsburgh has filed a federal lawsuit after the school hit it with a suspension.
Students for Justice in Palestine at Pitt filed suit April 15 in Pittsburgh federal court and is represented by the American Civil Liberties Union. The suit is in response to alleged discrimination at the hands of school officials who put SJP-Pitt on an indefinite suspension on March 18.
"The fact that the Middle East conflict elicits strong views is all the more reason that universities must maintain an environment that promotes the marketplace of ideas," said Witold Walczak, legal director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania.
"Pitt cannot constitutionally put its thumb on one side of the debate by harassing and chilling the pro-Palestinian students’ side of that important discussion.”
SJP-Pitt has been a registered student organization since at least 2009 but was mostly dormant until 2023 when it increased its advocacy efforts, which condemn Israel's military operations in Gaza and the United States' refusal to stop them. It hosted educational events, initiated demonstrations it says were peaceful and took to social media.
But a year ago, the University of Pittsburgh put an alert on an internal database that tells users to subject SJP-Pitt to heightened scrutiny. Other groups dedicated to the conflict did not receive the alert, the suit says.
Groups on campus supporting Israel have organized counter demonstrations, and the group Betar USA posted on Instagram that it was recruiting in Pittsburgh. Its message said it would give recruits a beeper which SJP-Pitt viewed as "a thinly veiled death threat" because of an attack carried out by exploding phones.
Last fall, Pitt relocated an SJP-Pitt demonstration, using the phrase "event in a non-reservable space," though SJP-Pitt says it fails to define "event."
"Defendants cannot simply declare... that various spaces on Pitt's campus, including traditional and designated public forums, are speech-free zones," the suit says.
The group sought to hold an event it called "Anti-Zionist Kabbalat Shabbat," which Pitt officials sought to rename "Non-Zionist Shabbat." Though SJP-Pitt thought it would work with Pitt on what to call it, Pitt instead canceled it in January, the suit says.
Things came to a head later when SJP-Pitt organized a letter with more than 70 other university clubs and community organizations that protested the treatment of SJP-Pitt. In March, it was placed on suspension.
Earlier this year, a Jewish club at Haverford College lost its lawsuit alleging anti-Semitism on campus after Philadelphia federal judge Gerald McHugh couldn't make sense of its complaint.
A free speech lawsuit against the University of Central Florida made its way in 2022 to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, which wrote:
"Nowhere is free speech more important than in our leading institutions of higher learning. Colleges and universities serve as the founts of—and the testing grounds for—new ideas. Their chief mission is to equip students to examine arguments critically and, perhaps even more importantly, to prepare young citizens to participate in the civic and political life of our democratic republic."