In Perlot v. Green, (D ID, June 30, 2022), an Idaho federal district court issued a preliminary injunction requiring the University of Idaho to rescind no-contact orders issued to three law students who are members of the Christian Legal Society and a limited-contact order issued to a faculty member who is the CLS advisor. Defendants were also barred from issuing future no-contact orders based on pure speech alone. The action, taken by the University because of its interpretation of Title IX provisions, were based on conversations or remarks by the students to a female LGBTQ student on the Christian biblical view of marriage and sexuality. The parties dispute the exact content of those remarks. The female student told university officials that she felt targeted and unsafe. The court said in part:
Defendants issued the no-contact orders to Plaintiffs because Plaintiffs discussed their sincerely held religious beliefs about marriage and because they discussed religious discrimination. Thus, it appears the no-contact orders apply to Plaintiffs because of the “message expressed.” ...
Similarly, Defendants’ orders targeted the viewpoint of Plaintiffs’ speech. Both students and professors expressed opposing viewpoints to the views expressed by Plaintiffs without any type of intervention, let alone punishment..... Thus, while all of these parties’ speech was on the same topic, only one viewpoint—Plaintiffs—was deemed worthy of intervention and discipline.....
Instead of focusing on sexual harassment, Defendants focus on harassment in general and argue that people have a right to be free from being bothered. Title IX does not provide such a right....
... The Court in Hill made a clear distinction between the right to attempt to persuade others to change their views and offensive speech that is so intrusive that the unwilling audience cannot avoid it. The right to free speech cannot be curtailed simply because the speaker’s message may be offensive to his audience....
In a footnote, commenting on a faculty member's statement that religious beliefs are not an excuse to deprive others of their rights, the court said:
Phrases such as this have taken root in recent years and paint an overtly negative picture of religious liberty. The assumption such phrases implicate is that people use their religion to mask discriminatory conduct and then try to “hide” from any legal consequences by invoking religious protection. The Court will not dissect why this assumption is a shallow look at religion, and fails to provide any substance to numerous individual constitutional rights. Suffice it to say, in a pluralistic society, people should honor differing viewpoints and build bridges of understanding instead of arguing that opposing viewpoints are inherently discriminatory and must be punished or excluded from the public square.
