Current and former students at the University of Michigan have filed a lawsuit against the school alleging it disproportionately disciplined pro-Palestinian protesters and violated their free speech rights.
The federal lawsuit was filed on Friday in the US District Court in Detroit. The plaintiffs allege that the school violated the students’ constitutional rights to free speech, due process and equal protection under the law.
The six current and former students also allege that the University of Michigan initiated discipline proceedings against the students for speech-related conduct that other groups weren’t punished for.
The plaintiffs also alleged that students were targeted with different degrees of disciplinary proceedings based on race. They also allege they were fired from campus jobs and blacklisted for future employment.
“The egregious Constitutional violations outlined in this suit are merely a fraction of the repression the University of Michigan has subjected student activists like us to because of our assertion that the University should not financially invest in, and materially benefit from, the genocide of the Palestinian people,” graduate student and plaintiff Nora Hilgart-Griff told the Detroit News.
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“That the University has departed from its longstanding allowance of student protest–even protest that may be critical of University policies or leadership–for this issue alone is evidence of the way the Palestinian people are systematically and intentionally dehumanized by the countries who fund and enable their dispossession and deaths.”
The lawsuit names the University of Michigan’s Board of Regents, its president, Santa Ono, vice president for student life, Martino Harmon, and two independent consultants, Omar Torres and Stephanie Jackson, as defendants.
Campus protest movement
Campus protests against Israel erupted after it launched a devastating offensive on the Gaza Strip in response to the Hamas-led 7 October attacks. Both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have said Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
The campus protests were widespread during the 2023 school year, but have been more sporadic this year. Rights groups say there has been a crackdown on free speech by universities and the US government.
The University of Michigan lawsuit is the latest component of the campus protest movement, with current and former students alleging that their schools’ behaviour violated constitutional rights, and potentially hindered their post-graduate career courses.
In September 2024, Students for Justice in Palestine at the University of Maryland sued their school to hold an interfaith vigil on 7 October to mourn those killed in Gaza. A federal judge ruled that the school could not block the event.
The University of Michigan case is related to a student sit-in at the university president’s office and a “die-in” at a student gathering space in August.
The lawsuit alleges that the school called in police from more than 10 jurisdictions to disperse the latter event. The police made 42 arrests and gave citations to protesters for failing to leave the building when they were told to do so.
The plaintiffs allege that the university has never taken similar action at prior sit-ins, which are common.
Twenty-five of the students given disciplinary notices requested an arbitration before a student panel, and all were found to have not violated the student code. Harmon, the vice president for student life, later rescinded the decision, according to the lawsuit.
The student protest movement was catapulted into the limelight by congressional hearings, in which a Republican majority in the House of Representatives alleged the schools had not done enough to stamp out protestors.
A Republican-led House committee accused university leaders of giving into antisemitism, with the US director of national intelligence even alleging that Iran is providing financial support to pro-Palestine activists. The debate also helped put Congresswoman Elise Stefanik on the political map.
Following her grilling of university presidents, President-elect Donald Trump nominated Stefanik as the US’ ambassador to the UN.