Facts
- James G. Gilles, a traveling Christian evangelist, used confrontational preaching and sought to speak on the Vincennes University campus, a public residential university in Indiana.
- In 2001, Gilles entered campus without invitation and preached on a lawn near the university library; a disturbance occurred.
- After the 2001 incident, the university adopted a policy barring solicitation on campus without prior approval and limiting approved solicitation to a brick walkway in front of the student union.
- The policy defined solicitation broadly to include seeking to obtain permission or to entice a person to action.
- When Gilles later returned, university officials directed him to use the designated brick walkway.
- Gilles claimed the designated location was too noisy to be effective and sued, alleging the policy violated the First Amendment.
- The district court granted summary judgment to the university officials; Gilles appealed.
Issues
- Whether central campus grounds such as a library-adjacent lawn are public, limited public, or nonpublic fora for an outside speaker, and what level of First Amendment protection applies.
- Whether requiring prior approval and restricting an outside evangelist’s activity to a designated campus location violates the First Amendment as applied.
- Whether the restrictions were reasonable and viewpoint neutral and left open adequate alternative channels for communication.
Decision
- The Seventh Circuit affirmed summary judgment for the university officials.
- The court held Gilles’s religious advocacy was protected speech, but he had no constitutional entitlement to speak at a particular preferred site on campus.
- The court concluded the university could regulate access by non-students to central campus areas and confine outside solicitation/speaking activity to a designated location.
- The court found the policy and its application to Gilles were reasonable in light of the university’s interests and were not based on hostility to his viewpoint.
- The Supreme Court denied certiorari.
Legal Principles
- A public university is not required to treat all campus property as a traditional public forum for outsiders; forum classification governs the applicable level of scrutiny.
- In a nonpublic or limited public forum, restrictions on outsider speech are permissible if they are reasonable and viewpoint neutral.
- The First Amendment does not require the government to provide the most effective or “prime” location for an outsider’s message on government property.
- Channeling outside expressive activity to a specific campus area and requiring prior approval can be constitutional when justified by institutional interests (e.g., order and campus functioning) and applied without viewpoint discrimination.
- The existence of alternative ways to reach the intended audience supports the constitutionality of location-based restrictions.
Conclusion
The Seventh Circuit held that Vincennes University’s requirement that an outside evangelist obtain approval and speak only from a designated walkway was a reasonable, viewpoint-neutral regulation of campus property and therefore did not violate the First Amendment.