Judge Affirms CSUN’s Ban of Web Site

Cal State Northridge officials did not violate a student’s constitutional rights by pulling the plug on a politically oriented World Wide Web site he posted through the university’s computer network, a Los Angeles judge ruled Monday.

The six-page summary judgment by Superior Court Judge David Horowitz effectively ends a lawsuit by Christopher Landers, who was a senior at CSUN last October when university officials blocked his site. His attorneys plan to appeal the case.

The site promoted the state Senate campaign of Democrat John Birke, who eventually lost to incumbent Cathie Wright (R-Simi Valley). It featured animation transforming Wright’s face into a grinning skull to highlight what Landers--a Birke campaign worker--called her ties to “the tobacco industry’s merchants of death.”

Landers and his attorneys contend his free-speech rights were violated by precisely the kind of institution that should pride itself on upholding them.

CSUN officials counter that a publicly funded institution cannot allow its equipment to be used for partisan politics, a stance they have clarified in recent months with a newly worded computer policy. The creation of the new policy proved pivotal in Monday’s ruling.

“The limits placed on speech by the current policy are, on their face, reasonable,” Horowitz wrote. “It does not limit speech based on any particular viewpoint expressed by a speaker.”

Birke predicted Monday that the decision will be reversed on appeal.

“There was nothing explicit or implicit in the [CSUN] policy that prohibited political advocacy,” he said.

CSUN attorney Donna Ziegler said the school does encourage free political discourse, but only by students, faculty, staff and administrators doing university-related work. Landers, she pointed out, was working for Birke outside of his CSUN studies.

“The university is not a place for business and campaigns to promote their causes,” she said.