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The California State University system and CSU San Marcos will pay hundreds of thousands of dollars and the chancellor's office will issue a systemwide policy on viewpoint-neutral student association fund spending to settle a 2017 lawsuit over student fee money not being allocated to bring an anti-abortion speaker onto campus.
Legal fees and other costs to be paid by the university and university system total $240,000, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported. The settlement does not lay blame on either side of the lawsuit.
It comes after a student sued CSU San Marcos and its student auxiliary after he and the group Students for Life were not given a $500 grant to host an anti-abortion speaker, Mike Adams, who is also a professor at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. The lawsuit alleged the auxiliary collects mandatory fees from students. A conservative Christian group, the Alliance Defending Freedom, represented the university's chapter of Students for Life.
Under the agreement, the CSU chancellor's office will within 90 days issue a systemwide policy on viewpoint-neutral spending of student association funds on speeches.
The chancellor's office issued a statement saying the court found the auxiliary's funding process wasn't identified or documented adequately but that the court didn't make any finding that viewpoint discrimination had taken place.
