Excerpt:
In a victory for free speech advocates, it has been confirmed that University of California officials reimbursed a student Republican group at UC Santa Barbara (UCSB) for expenses incurred hosting David Horowitz for an on-campus lecture. The university's student government initially balked at paying the $1800 for the conservative author's May 26th appearance, simply because they didn't like what he had to say. The College Republicans (CRs) turned to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) for help. It was all the help they needed. "UCSB's student government utterly refused to fulfill its constitutional duty to be viewpoint-neutral in its funding decisions," FIRE President Greg Lukianoff said. "Thankfully, UCSB has finally rectified this error and saved itself from an embarrassing and inevitably doomed fight against the First Amendment."
University officials had no choice. On March 22, 2000, the United States Supreme Court unanimously overturned a ruling by the 7th Circuit Court, which had declared mandatory student fees to be unconstitutional. Southworth v. The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System was a case filed by three students at the University of Wisconsin who contended that it was a violation of their First Amendment rights to use portions of their student fees to fund ideological or political activities with which they disagreed. The students were ostensibly offended that the University was funding activities by groups with multi-cultural, environmental, or lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered agendas.