A scheduled MILO tour date at Minnesota State University on December 15th has been hit with an increased security fee by college administrators just over two weeks before the talk is due to take place.
In an email to Breitbart Tech, the student organizer for the event claimed that the school is now demanding “double the recommended security presence,” meaning that they “need double the funds.”
“This was I believe a tactic to have us cancel the event because they don’t think we can raise that money and we will but then they just got benefit of draining us of more of our resources” he continued. “We want the bullying of conservatives on liberal campuses to stop.”
Several universities have previously raised security fees in an attempt to derail MILO’s talks at universities around the United States, including the University of Maryland, which was forcefully cancelled in October.
As Breitbart’s Tom Ciccotta explained last month, “by imposing excessive fees on student groups, administrators at the University of Maryland are likely violating a 1992 Supreme Court ruling, which decided that public universities can not impose security fees based upon their perception of how attendees may react to the event.”
In Forsyth County v. Nationalist Movement (1992), the Supreme Court determined that government actors—like public college or university administrators—may not lawfully impose security fees based on their own subjective judgments about “the amount of hostility likely to be created by the speech based on its content.” Such fees amount to a tax on speech an administrator subjectively dislikes, or subjectively believes is likely to cause disruption or violence.
Since Minnesota State University is also a public college, they could also be breaking this law.
Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington or like his page at Facebook.