In the Fall of 2019, YAL Chapter Presidents Mena and Matt Botros held a “Criminals for Gun-Free Zones” 2nd Amendment Event on campus and were shut down by university officials. The school administrator told them that they not only had to go to the designated “Free Speech Zone” but they also had to fill out paperwork just to use it. Fortunately, for the cause of liberty, YAL’s New Jersey State, Chair James Pillion had one of his activists record the campus officer while shutting the event down.

This video evidence was more than enough to bring Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) in on the case. Within the next few weeks a lawsuit was filed against the school demanding that they change their policies so no students have their First Amendment rights violated in a similar way. ADF’s case was airtight and it was very quickly apparent that the school would lose the case and be forced to settle for ADF’s demands.

Unfortunately, the Covid panic of 2020 slowed New Jersey’s already sluggish court system down to a crawl. The students involved had to wait almost two years before the bureaucrats in the New Jersey court finally forced the bureaucrats at Montclair State to pay the damages and change the policies. ADF made sure that the school not only changed the unconstitutional Free Speech Zones and Prior Permission policies, but also were able to remove the school’s draconic Bias Response Team and change the way SGA funds are appropriated to prevent viewpoint discrimination.