The University of California, Berkeley settled with two conservative groups that brought a lawsuit against it over accusations it discriminated against conservatives.
According to The Hill, the school will be required to alter its policy around major events because of the settlement. The suit was filed after conservatives claimed people with a right-leaning political opinion were wrongly prevented from speaking at big events on campus.
UC Berkeley must also pay $70,000 to the lawyers that represented the groups in the lawsuit, the Young America's Foundation and the Berkeley College Republicans.
"While we regret the time, effort, and resources that have been expended successfully defending the constitutionality of UC Berkeley's event policy, this settlement means the campus will not need to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in unrecoverable defense costs to prove that UC Berkeley has never discriminated on the basis of viewpoint," UC Berkeley spokesman Dan Mogulof said, The Hill reported.
The Young America's Foundation, a youth conservative group, reacted to the settlement by calling it a victory.
"Young America's Foundation is thrilled that, after more than a year of UC Berkeley battling against the First Amendment rights of its own students, the University finally felt the heat and saw the light of their unconstitutional censorship," spokesman Spencer Brown said.
"YAF's landmark victory for free expression — long squelched by Berkeley's scheming administrators who weaponized flawed policies to target conservatives — shows that the battle for freedom undertaken by YAF on campuses nationwide is a necessary one."
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