In a Nov. 13 letter to Pomona College President G. Gabrielle Starr, five civil rights organizations issued a legal warning against the college, claiming that Starr’s decision to suspend a group of students for their alleged participation in the Oct. 7 protest was a violation of their rights under California law.
Palestine Legal, the Center for Protest Law and Litigation, the National Lawyers Guild of Los Angeles and the ACLU Foundation of Southern California claimed that Pomona punished students for the act of protesting, consequently violating their rights to free speech, expression and association under California’s Leonard Law. In the letter, the groups urged Pomona to immediately lift the “unlawful suspensions.”
The Leonard Law is a California state law passed in 1992 and amended in 2006 that protects free speech for students at private post-secondary institutions, which were initially not subject to the same constitutional obligations that public institutions were.
In addition to arguing that Pomona violated this law, the letter argued that the college violated students’ due process rights by suspending them without a “meaningful opportunity to be heard.”
The authors pointed out that, in the notices sent to students before being suspended, the only specific allegations that Starr made were that the suspended students were present inside Carnegie Hall during protest activities.
According to the letter, students cannot be punished “solely for engaging in speech,” yet the college provided no evidence proving that the suspended students committed acts of violence, bodily harm, destruction of property, or intimidation.
“The suspension letters make clear that the College is holding anyone who attends a protest responsible for any unlawful or disruptive actions that may occur within the vicinity of the protest, regardless of whether the person participated in or even knew of those actions,” the letter reads. “This is, in effect, punishing the act of protest itself.”
The letter alleges that in this, the suspended students were punished for the actions of others, infringing upon the principles established in Supreme Court cases like NAACP v. Caliborne Hardware Co. In these cases, the First Amendment prevented state courts from holding a civil rights boycott leader liable for the violent actions of some participants who acted without his personal authorization.
The authors also claimed that Pomona violated students’ rights to the common law doctrine of Fair Procedure. In situations where the severity of allegations might significantly impact a student’s ability to complete their postsecondary education, this doctrine — which ensures the quality treatment of court users — must apply.
“The seriousness of these allegations and the College’s failure to engage in any fair procedure presents a clear hindrance to the students being able to pursue their education, at Pomona or elsewhere, if they want to continue to progress toward their degrees,” the letter reads.
Additionally, the authors argued that Pomona is doing “immediate and irreparable harm” to its suspended students, who they pointed out are disproportionately low-income, BIPOC and members of other marginalized communities.
“Overnight, these students were forced to contend with a loss of their housing, meal plan, access to medical resources, including mental health care, income from various on-campus jobs, loss of their support networks and community, and a full year delay in progressing toward graduation,” the letter reads.
The authors requested a response by Nov. 20 describing how Pomona’s response will determine whether or not the groups pursue legal avenues.
“If the College refuses to change course, we reserve the right to take any necessary legal action to vindicate the rights of the students,” the letter concludes.
Patricia Vest, interim chief of communications officer at Pomona, addressed the warning in an email to TSL.
“The College has strong defenses to the claims of the letter, including that our decisions are based on the individual’s participation in a material disruption inside an academic building during work hours, not on speech or expression,” she wrote. “The takeover of Carnegie on Oct. 7 targeted our academic mission and significantly disrupted the educational process of more than 600 Pomona and Claremont Colleges students, as well as the ability of faculty and staff to continue to perform their work in support of the academic functions of the College.”
She added that, in conformity with the extraordinary authority delegated to the president by the Board of Trustees, the cases of suspended students were not required to be subject to discipline by the Judicial Council. Suspended students have been offered transportation home paid by the college and offered information in their case letters.
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