Jury Finds Boise State Liable for Violating Coffee Shop’s Free Speech Rights

​Boise State University is on the hook for $4 million in damages after a jury found the school liable for violating a coffee shop owner’s First Amendment rights. It’s another in a trend of free speech verdicts at higher-education institutions, and a reminder of just how expensive suppressing speech is becoming.
 
The lawsuit, resolved last month, stemmed from a controversy surrounding a business called Big City Coffee, which opened its doors at Boise State in September 2020 in the wake of the George Floyd protests. After opening, the shop’s owner – then engaged to a former police officer paralyzed from a gunfight with a fugitive – displayed a “thin blue line” sticker near the door to her establishment.
 
It was not, to say the least, well received by all.
 
Soon, students angry from the summer’s heated discourse turn their discontent on the small display of police support. This ignited social media back-and-forth that – according to accounts – quickly snowballed into acrimony. One student posted on Snapchat: "I hope y’all don’t go there if you truly support your bipoc peers and other students, staff and faculty.” When the shop’s owner saw the post, she responded with an explanation for her support of the police. So far, both sides had exercised their rights to free speech under the Constitution.
 
Them the university got involved. The details of the discussions that took place between the coffee shop and the university are disputed. What’s undisputed is that the coffee shop’s contract with Boise State was terminated. The owner sued, and a jury found in her favor, awarding $3 million in compensatory damages and another $1 million in punitive damages.
 
This case in Boise recalls another not-too-distant controversy concerning Oberlin College, in which students and administrators boycotted a local bakery after an employee there caught a student attempting to shoplift bottles of wine.
 
In that instance, Oberlin officials joined with students in protest outside the bakery, where flyers distributed among the crowd accused the store of being a “RACIST establishment with a LONG ACCOUNT OF RACIAL PROFILING and DISCRIMINATION.”
 
A jury sided with the boycotted business in the Oberlin case, too, finding the university liable for intentional infliction of emotional distress, intentional interference with a business relationship, and libel. The verdict included a whopping damages figure of $36.5 million. (The shoplifter, for what it’s worth, pled guilty.)
 
Recognizing that such disputes are often of a “(s)he said, they said” nature, it’s clear that it doesn’t often pay for a university to take sides against local businesses, particularly when facts are at issue, or the situation is subject to enflamed passions.
 
Higher education institutions must tread carefully in such cases, which is why many colleges and universities are now adopting viewpoint neutrality policies which prohibit administrators from speaking out on issues of public concern that don’t directly implicate university functions.
 
When universities are confronted with controversy, their best course of action is to stand back, do what they can to ensure safety, and let others do the talking. Being an arbiter of social justice can be costly.