Court Opinion

ID: 9627179
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 08:37:41.111837+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:06:41.928513
License: Public Domain

DENNIS JACOBS, Chief Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
I concur in the majority’s result insofar as it affirms the dismissal of some claims, *136but I dissent insofar as it reverses the grant of qualified immunity.
I concede that this short opinion of mine does not consider or take into account the majority opinion. So I should disclose at the outset that I have not read it. I suppose this is unusual, so I explain why.
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The majority has fulfilled its responsibility to explain at some length its vacatur of a part of the district court’s judgment. But this is not a case that should occupy the mind of a person who has anything consequential to do. In a nutshell, the editors of the College Voice student newspaper used it as a campaign flyer to promote the self-styled radicals of the “Student Union” party in a long-ago student election, and the college president, finding that the partisan use of student-activity funds made a mockery of the election rules, directed that the election be re-run. The gist of the complaint is that the editors’ speech was chilled, which is deemed to be a bad thing.
This is a case about nothing. Injunctive relief from the school’s election rules is now moot (if it was ever viable); and plaintiffs’ counsel conceded at oral argument that the only relief sought in this litigation is nominal damages. Now, after years of litigation over two dollars, the majority will impose on a busy judge to conduct a trial on this silly thing, and require a panel of jurors to set aside their more important duties of family and business in order to decide it. See Amato v. City of Saratoga Springs, 170 F.3d 311, 322-23 (2d Cir.1999) (Jacobs, J., concurring) (noting that a trial over one dollar is a “wasteful imposition on the trial judge and on the taxpayers and veniremen”).
With due respect to my colleagues in the majority, and to whatever compulsion they feel to expend substantial energies on this case, I fear that the majority opinion (44 pages of typescript) will only feed the plaintiffs’ fantasy of oppression: that plutocrats are trying to stifle an upsurge of Pol-Potism on Staten Island. Contrary to the impression created by the majority’s lengthy formal opinion, this case is not a cause célebre; it is a slow-motion tantrum by children spending their graduate years trying to humiliate the school that conferred on them a costly education from which they evidently derived small benefit. A selection from the illiterate piffle in the disputed issue of the College Voice is set out in the margin for the reader’s fun.1
*137On the merits, I would affirm for the reasons given in Judge Gershon’s careful and thorough opinion (which I have read).
President Springer’s decision to re-run the election was (to apply the governing standard) not unreasonable in light of clearly established law. The school adopted election rules intended to level the playing field and limit the use of student-activities funds for election-related purposes. President Springer’s decision was based on her view that the May 1997 issue of the College Voice was “a thinly veiled student activity fee funded piece of campaign literature for the Student Union slate.” The majority remands for a trial on whether the college president acted on an impermissible belief that a school newspaper funded by (compelled) student-activities fees should be balanced.
I think that the First Amendment protects the freedom of the press and that this protection should be strongest when a newspaper prints election-related content at election time. But this area of the law is (unfortunately) far from clear.
In 2003, six years after the student-government election at issue, the Supreme Court upheld numerous limitations on speech during election time — in an opinion that could open the way to direct regulation of a newspaper if its election coverage becomes too “slanted” or “biased.” See McConnell v. Fed. Election Comm’n, 540 U.S. 93, 283-86, 124 S.Ct. 619, 157 L.Ed.2d 491 (2003) (Thomas, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). In 2004, this Court upheld a state election law that provided for the regulation of news stories about candidates based on the discretionary rulings of the law’s administrators. See Landell v. Sorrell, 382 F.3d 91, 181-82 (2d Cir.2004) (Winter, J., dissenting), rev’d sub nom. Randall v. Sorrell, — U.S. —, 126 S.Ct. 2479, 165 L.Ed.2d 482 (2006). That discretion to ensure a “fair” election is the same kind of discretion that President Springer exercised here.
In this light, it cannot be said that in 1997 there was a clear line between [i] a viewpoint-based reprisal against a campus newspaper and [ii] the implementation of neutral and constitutional election standards. In any event, a school administrator should not have to become a constitutional-law professor in order to save herself from personal liability when giving a needed lesson in fair play.
* * sjs
This prolonged litigation has already cost the school a lot of money that could better have been spent to enrich course *138offerings or expand student day-care. If this case ends with a verdict for plaintiffs (anything is possible with a jury), the district court will have the opportunity to consider whether the exercise merits an award of attorneys’ fees in excess of one-third of two dollars.

. One student journalist laments that he is no longer the friend of the incumbent president of the student government: “I am very sad today. I lost a friend; his name is Joe Ca-nale. ... Things changed on April 9, 1997. It was a pizza day I won’t forget.... Joe did not shake my hand and all he said to me, in a rather drone voice, was ‘Getting ready for the elections?’ From that point on I knew, Joe had disowned me, all because of my affiliation with [the Student Union].... 'When I found out he renounced my friendship, because of my affiliation with Student Union, I adopted the slogan ‘Joe Must Go’ to console me in my hour of need.' ”
Another article denounces "pizza politics”: free pizza at student events is "another of the perverse policies set forth by this bureaucratic institution. The pizza is most certainly not ‘free’. It was paid for, in full, by the student body of the College of Staten Island, it belongs to them. The pizza is the property of the student body, not of the student government.” The same writer is agitated by a student-government planned “Solidarity/Unity Fest” which included a "velcro wall, a climbing mountain, a gladiator joust, a laser tag maze, human bowling, a bungee run, a velcro wall [another velcro wall?], human fooseball [sic], face painters, jugglers, mimes, 12 different carnival style games and things of that nature.” According to the author, this "Fest” was an “attempt[] to coerce votes out of the student body in exchange for carnal pleasures.” The article closes with a call to “end the evil tyranous [sic] reign of the cur*137rent [student government] by whatever means necesaary [sic].”
The paper’s coverage of a "so-called Mayoral Forum” complains that the two political parties “have historically been slaves to the Wall Street corporate tycoons, while either ignoring or killing the working class and poor people of this city and nation.”
An editorial sets out the goals of the paper: "We oppose the poisonous divisions fostered on the basis of race by the bosses, who make Black and white workers fight each other for the crumbs off their table ... even though it is the workers who produce all the wealth.” The paper "seeks to engage all those who are committed to fighting exploitation and oppression in common action against the common enemy ... capitalism.” (ellipsis in original).
The issue features the Student Union’s "12-Pt. Program For Change,” including a call to “END CORPORATE CONTROL OF THE BOOKSTORE” so that it can "be returned immediately to the student body.” The reason: "CUNY in general and CSI in particular have become the crown jewel in [Barnes & Noble's] campaign of corporate terror.”