A Denver lawyer for Vietnam-era radical William Ayers and University of Wyoming student Meghan Lanker today filed a court request for an injunction to override school officials’ decision to cancel Ayers April 28 speech on campus.
The request claims a violation of First Amendment protections.
“The United States Supreme Court has repeatedly emphasized that the First Amendment must be vigorously protected to allow the free and open exchange of ideas, and this core constitutional protection is most precious on our college and university campuses,” states the claim filed in Wyoming’s U.S. District Court in Cheyenne.
Ayers was co-founder of the Weather Underground, a radical anti-war group that claimed responsibility for several bombings and is now an education professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The fact that he and Barack Obama had joined in some of the same Chicago events became an issue in the 2008 presidential campaign,
His speech was requested by the university’s Social Justice Research Center in 2008 and initially approved by the school.
