Colleges Should Pay Heed to Oberlin s Costly Libel Case
(Bloomberg Opinion) — If colleges still thought there was little risk in taking up their students causes, they should reconsider in light of what has happened to Oberlin College. An Ohio appeals court has upheld $30 million-plus in damages in a lawsuit against the school brought by a local bakery that was accused of a history of racial profiling.
The case has gotten lots of attention as a touchstone in the culture wars and because of the free expression issues surrounding it. Although the case could still be appealed to the Ohio Supreme Court and even conceivably to the U.S. Supreme Court it is now possible to derive some hardheaded lessons from the process thus far. For one thing, universities need to be extremely careful about how they interact with student protests if they want to avoid being held liable for their students words and actions.
For another, the First Amendment isn t as protective of protest as you might think. It doesn t protect libel so protesters (at least those with assets worth pursuing) need to be cautious about putting into writing factual claims that are demonstrably false.
But libel and defamation are difficult to prove. A lot of it turns out to be just opinion, which is protected speech, however idiotic it may be. Oberlin hit on factual claims, I’m assuming, by saying the bakery had a history of “racial profiling,” which (shocker!) it did not.