[News] Ward Churchill's Bosses Should Face Liability, National Lawyers Guild

[Anti-Imperialist News]

For Immediate Release September 13, 2011

Contact: Nathan Tempey

<mailto:communications at nlg.org>communications at nlg.org

<tel:212-679-5100>212-679-5100, ext. 15

New York:

The National Lawyers Guild filed an amicus curiae ("friend of the 
court") brief Monday on behalf of Ward Churchill, the tenured 
professor fired in retaliation for his essay response to the 
September 11 attacks.


The essay drew a storm of media coverage for its sharp criticism of 
American foreign policy, which in turn prompted a malicious 
investigation of Prof. Churchill by University of Colorado 
administrators. In 2009 a unanimous jury found that the university 
violated the First Amendment by firing Churchill not because of 
alleged research misconduct, but because of his constitutionally 
protected speech. A district judge then vacated the verdict, 
declaring that the university and its regents have "quasi-judicial" 
immunity. Churchill's appeal is currently before the Colorado Supreme Court.

The Guild brief argues, in support of the appeal, that this 
politically-motivated firing poses a threat to the First Amendment 
rights of all people, and particularly to academic freedom. The brief 
contends further that immunity granted to university regents for 
their role in Churchill's firing could undermine Section 1983 of 
Title 42 of the U.S. Code, which has been a bulwark of civil rights 
since Reconstruction.

[The Court maintaining university regents immunity] will allow state 
universities to violate with impunity the protections afforded 
faculty members under the First Amendment as well as the 
Constitution's guarantees of due process and equal protection, the 
brief states.

The National Lawyers Guild filed the brief on behalf of itself and 
the Colorado Conference of the American Association of University 
Professors, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the Society of 
American Law Teachers, Latino/a Critical Legal Theory, and the 
National Conference of Black Lawyers, as well as many individual 
attorneys and law professors. The full text is available on the 
Guild's <http://www.nlg.org/resources/amicus-curiae/>amicus 
curiae<http://www.nlg.org/resources/amicus-curiae/> page. For a full 
timeline of the case, see Prof. Churchill's 
<http://wardchurchill.net/churchill-v-cu-2/timeline/>website.

The National Lawyers Guild was founded in 1937 and is the oldest and 
largest public interest/human rights bar organization in the United 
States. Its headquarters are in New York and it has chapters in every state.



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