On February 26, 2019, Chapter President Mike Brown and YAL State Chair Mitch Strider held a Free Speech Ball event on the campus of Jones County Junior College. Within minutes the pair of free speech activists were stopped and told they must ask permission from the school in order to continue their expressive activity. Almost two years later, on November 19, 2020, FIRE announced that their lawsuit against the school over the incident had been settled and the school would be forced to correct their unconstitutional codes.

Mike Brown had multiple interactions with school officials over the course of two months as he tried to reach other students with the message of liberty and grow membership of his YAL club on campus. In both of these instances, Brown was scolded by campus police and administrators for not coming to the school bureaucrats and begging permission before exercising his constitutional rights. In one of these meetings, Mike asked JCJC’s police chief why these policies were in place, to which the chief replied that the public school needed to “control access to students on campus.” The violation of Mike’s rights were exacerbated when he was told that the very administrator who was in charge of approving such free speech permits was on leave of the office and the chief was “unsure” when she would return. Mike was being threatened with arrest for practicing his Constitutional rights and then told there was no way to get permission even if he was inclined to do so.

YAL’s Free Speech Director connected Mike with FIRE, who immediately began pushing back against the overbearing administration. After several attempts to confront the school and work with them to change policy, it was clear the school was not open to listening to reason. In September 2019, FIRE filed a case against the school on Mike and YAL’s behalf. During the course of the lawsuit, FIRE received support from the United States Department of Justice–dealing a crushing blow to the school’s arguments. The DOJ released a statement in December 2019 saying the school’s speech codes “might not be out of place…in Geroge Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four ” and “[these policies] have no place in the United States of America.

Finally, after over a year of legal battle, Jones County Junior College settled in court, forcing them to revise their free speech codes to no longer require students to ask permission to gather on campus. The perseverance of Brown and the hard work of FIRE paid off and won a significant battle for liberty on campus.