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posted by martyb on Wednesday October 18 2017, @09:18PM   Printer-friendly
from the what-if-nobody-showed-up? dept.

Governor Rick Scott (R) has declared a state of emergency in the county where the University of Florida lay, due to a planned speech by Richard Spencer. According to NPR:

When Hurricane Irma was bearing down on Florida last month, Gov. Rick Scott declared a state of emergency. On Monday, he did the same thing in Alachua County, ahead of a speech by white nationalist Richard Spencer at the University of Florida in Gainesville.

"We live in a country where everyone has the right to voice their opinion, however, we have zero tolerance for violence and public safety is always our number one priority," Scott said in a statement. "This executive order is an additional step to ensure that the University of Florida and the entire community is prepared so everyone can stay safe."

"I find that the threat of a potential emergency is imminent," Scott declared in his executive order, noting that Alachua County Sheriff Sadie Darnell had requested the state's assistance. The order will make it easier for various agencies to coordinate a security plan for Thursday's speech at the university.

[...] No campus group invited Spencer to speak, and the university is not hosting or sponsoring the event. Spencer's group, the National Policy Institute, is paying the university $10,564 for facility rental and security.

And it looks like it could get expensive:

The speech and accompanying protests are also a major expense: The university as well as state and local agencies expect to spend more than $500,000 to provide additional security.

And the University of Florida can't demand that Spencer pay the full cost of protecting him, because of a 1992 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Forsyth County v. Nationalist Movement.

In that decision, the university explains, "the Court clarified that the government cannot assess a security fee on the speaker based upon the costs of controlling the reaction of potential hostile onlookers or protestors," under legal doctrine known as the "heckler's veto."

Well, that is the cost of free speech in a free country.


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  • (Score: 2) by urza9814 on Friday October 20 2017, @07:02PM

    by urza9814 (3954) on Friday October 20 2017, @07:02PM (#585373) Journal

    So you are wanting people to believe that you are serious when you claim that if a building is public there can be no scheduled events, no public speakers because anyone, absolutely anyone, is free to simply stand and speak there? You assert that I can walk into my local city council during a meeting and begin speaking and there is nothing they can do, that when they have the large armored gruff policeman drag my ass out they are violating my rights and should sue?

    There are different laws against interrupting a public meeting...but this isn't a public meeting, it's a lecture.

    And if I want to go to a university, walk into an occupied lecture hall and begin holding forth they simply have to accept that I am exercising my right to speak instead of calling campus security?

    Yes. When I was at Penn State that happened several times; nobody ever got arrested or expelled for it. If it's a frequent, persistent campaign you could maybe get them arrested for harassment, but single incidents are perfectly acceptable.

    Or are you are so utterly convinced of the rightness of your cause and the utter wickedness of the speaker in this case that you simply can't imagine anyone being against "shut it down!" Or more bluntly: Fascism is good when YOU do it. SJWs Always Project. Always.

    Oh sure, and I suppose the priests that weren't students or in any way affiliated with the university that would still come around every week shoving giant posters of aborted fetuses in everyones' faces were leftist SJWs, huh? Because tons of people complained but nobody could ever get them booted off campus either because that too is protected speech. Not that I disagree with that decision either, of course they have that right, no matter how much I would have preferred to not have to look at that every goddamn week...

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