A district court sided with a Portland State University professor on Tuesday, issuing a preliminary injunction against an employee at the University of Oregon for violating the professor’s First Amendment rights on social media.
The case stems from an incident in which Tova Stabin, then the communications manager for the University of Oregon’s Division of Equity and Inclusion, blocked Twitter user Bruce Gilley from following the division’s official account on Twitter, now known as X.
Mr. Gilley had reposted a reply to Ms. Stabin’s post, which she had titled a “Racism Interrupter,” on June 14, 2022.
He filed a lawsuit against Ms. Stabin on Aug. 11, 2022. Ms. Stabin has since retired.
According to the complaint, Ms. Stabin’s post “was designed to provoke a discussion about racism or DEI,” referring to the acronym for the concept of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
The post read “You can interrupt racism” and included an image with the text of a hypothetical conversation. “It sounded like you just said ___. Is that really what you meant?” the text read, indicating that people could follow this script to “interrupt racism” in conversations.
Mr. Gilley, a professor of political science at Portland State University and a critic of DEI, retweeted the post, filling in the blank with the statement, “My entry: ... you just said ‘all men are created equal.’”
According to the lawsuit, Mr. Gilley was then blocked because Ms. Stabin sought “to suppress his viewpoint.”
“Even if he were to be temporarily unblocked, or use an alias, Bruce Gilley remains concerned that he could be blocked again in the future for expressing a viewpoint critical of the ideology of diversity, equity, and inclusion, thereby inviting self-censorship,” the complaint reads.
Mr. Gilley filed a public records request in which he found two other blocked Twitter users who “expressed politically conservative viewpoints.”
District Judge Marco Hernández granted Mr. Gilley’s motion for a preliminary injunction to prevent the University of Oregon’s Division of Equity and Inclusion from blocking him on social media, citing in part the university’s social media guidelines that authorize staff members to monitor social media posts and to delete or restrict access to users whose replies contain “violent, obscene, profane, hateful or racist” language.
In addition, a staff member may delete replies and block users who “threaten or defame” or make comments that are “out of context, off-topic, or not relevant to the topic at hand.”
Ms. Stabin had stated that she blocked Mr. Gilley because she believed his reply was off-topic, the complaint reads.
She had sent an email to a colleague stating that Mr. Gilley was not only “being obnoxious, but bringing obnoxious people to the site some.”
In another email, she “stated that Plaintiff was ‘as I recall talking something about the oppression of white men, if I recall,’” the complaint reads.
The appeals court ruled that if Mr. Gilley was blocked for quoting from the Declaration of Independence because it was perceived as hateful, then “such blocking would violate the Constitution.”
“Deleting or hiding the post for that reason would also violate the Constitution,” the complaint reads.
The Epoch Times has contacted the University of Oregon for comment.
