Quote:
Originally Posted by Kevin
Generally at OU, the GLOs own their own homes. SAE was different in that they leased that property from the school. In fact, the previous time they were thrown off of campus, the SAE house was used for administrative offices.
The SAE alumni have retained Stephen Jones, who is a "high profile" attorney who generally represents right-wing causes. They have a decent 1st Amendment claim--one that I'd personally like to see brought to federal court to possibly make some precedent. It would be nice to know the limits of power of public schools to punish conduct or speech they deem offensive.
There's probably a really solid suit for violations of the landlord-tenant act, what with OU summarily booting SAE from their rental property.
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I think they have a good free speech claim, and the men who were evicted but not on the bus have a good freedom of association claim, as well. They were summarily ordered to move out of their housing because they associate with racists. They probably also have a good due process claim -- even if the University was within its rights to boot them, they were entitled to notice and a hearing before ordered to move out of the house. The men who were expelled may also have a due process claim, if they did not have notice and hearing before being expelled.
I love the idea of landlord/tenant claims.
Oklahoma administration has handled this VERY badly. Those men were racists assholes, but they have a legal right to be racist assholes. There's not much a state university should do about it. If they had let SAE pull their charter and then went through the correct process to have the men move out of the leased premises, it would be different.
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