Michigan State University (MSU) is facing a lawsuit from students Nathan Barbieri and Nolan Radomski, who allege that MSU marketing professor Amy Wisner charged her 600 students $99 each to join a left-wing advocacy group as part of her course.
The group, called The Rebellion Community, is associated with Planned Parenthood and focuses on far-left causes such as dismantling oppressive systems. The lawsuit claims that the professor required her students to engage in speech that was antithetical to [their] deeply held beliefs, thereby violating their First Amendment rights.
Wisner allegedly collected over $60,000 in funds and used them to purchase an RV. The students, who described themselves as pro-life, were also aghast to learn that the fees they were compelled to pay as membership fees would be donated to Planned Parenthood.
Alliance Defending Freedom, which represents the students, argues that the Constitution protects individuals from being compelled to speak or subsidize the speech of people they do not want to promote. ADF Attorney Logan Spena told Fox News that the professor was using her position as a faculty member at a university teaching a required course to require hundreds of students to engage in speech they disagreed with.
The lawsuit claims that forcing free and independent individuals to endorse ideas they find objectionable is always demeaning. It also argues that compelling a person to subsidize the speech of other private speakers raises similar First Amendment concerns.
Wisner initially told her students that she would reap no benefit from the subscriptions, which allegedly turned out to be false. After the students complained, MSU removed Wisner from the class and offered students a refund of the money they had paid to The Rebellion Community, which totaled roughly $60,000.
MSU spokesman Dan Olsen told MLive that Wisner, an adjunct professor, is no longer with the university. The students, however, claim in the lawsuit that Wisner should be forced to pay the money back, arguing that she is still out there using these funds to promote ideas students disagree with.
The lawsuit also names Judith Whipple, the interim dean of the Broad College of Business, and interim Provost Thomas Jeitschko. It notes that MSUs current policies encourage professors not to profit from assigning their own work to students but do not explicitly forbid it.
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