Student wins $1 in free speech suit

One dollar is the symbolic award given in free speech cases.

Christian DeJohn, a Pennsylvania Army National Guard sergeant and former Temple graduate student won his free speech case against the university Aug. 4, when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled that Temple’s former sexual harassment policy did indeed violate students’ First Amendment rights.

“I think [the ruling] sends a strong message. I think it’s going to help protect students’ First Amendment rights,” DeJohn said.

DeJohn first took Temple to court in 2006, filing eight complaints – six retaliation claims against former history department chair Dr. Richard Immerman, history professor Dr. Gregory Urwin, former President David Adamany and the university. The other two claims challenged the constitutionality of the then-standing sexual harassment policy.

A federal judge immediately dismissed DeJohn’s claims of retaliation against Temple, its administration and professors. DeJohn said the university unjustly prevented him from obtaining his degree based on his political beliefs and status as a U.S. military veteran.

The judge, however, did rule that Temple’s sexual harassment policy, which contained language similar to that of the Equal Opportunity Act, was overly broad and unconstitutional. Though the university amended the policy before the case went to court, the judge permanently enjoined the previous one, preventing Temple from reverting back to it.

Temple appealed the ruling in April 2007, but lost the case in August 2008.

“We think the ruling is wrong,” said university counsel George Moore, who oversees all legal affairs of the university. “We think it’s wrongly decided. The court misapplied the law [and] the court didn’t focus on the pertinent facts.”

Moore said that in any case, the ruling will not have immediate impact on Temple or its current policies.

“The adverse consequence of this is that the plaintiff’s attorneys, who make a living out of these kinds of challenges, for whatever purposes that they have in mind, will be able to submit a petition to have Temple pay the attorneys’ fees for having brought this impertinent lawsuit. They haven’t submitted that petition yet,” Moore said.

Attorney Joe Tucker, who represented Temple in court, could not be reached for comment. Nate Kellum, David French and David Hacker, three attorneys that represented DeJohn, could not be reached for comment either.

DeJohn said the ruling is by no means an ending.

He said he is currently considering filing slander suits against Tucker, Urwin, Immerman and Adamany for statements they made about him in court and during his tenure at the university.

“This is a beginning of the next part of the fight,” said DeJohn, who has asked for President Ann Weaver Hart to address the matter in a press conference.

“Why on earth would he be expecting to hear from President Hart? What is the purpose of her communicating with him?” said Moore, who does not understand why DeJohn would request to hear from Hart.

“I am loath to discuss something that has not yet materialized,” said Urwin, who was the secondary reader of DeJohn’s graduate thesis. “I don’t know if he has found a gullible benefactor who is willing to bankroll such a frivolous suit.”

“I stand ready to do whatever is necessary to defend my good name both in court and out,” said Urwin, who was recognized for his valor in aiding a World War II veteran in the Stars and Stripes American military newspaper recently.

DeJohn said he still wants his degree from Temple, having completed all of the requirements for it. He said Temple has been sitting on his thesis, which he paid to have evaluated three years ago.

“They can’t come up with a coherent reason why they’re not evaluating it,” he said.

“We don’t give degrees to people who sue,” Moore said. “We give degrees to people who satisfy the academic requirements.”

Morgan Zalot can be reached at morgan.zalot@temple.edu.

Former grad student sues university

A lawsuit filed by a former graduate student has Temple in the midst of a legal battle over students’ First Amendment rights.
On April 10, in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, Temple appealed a March 2007 ruling that the university’s old sexual harassment policy was too broad and unconstitutional. Temple amended the old policy, which the District Court permanently enjoined.

Sgt. Christian DeJohn, 38, a Pennsylvania National Guard combat veteran and former Temple graduate student, filed suit against Temple in 2006, challenging the constitutionality of the university’s then-standing sexual harassment policy.

If Temple loses the appeal, it will be prevented from reverting back to its old policy, said David Hacker, an Alliance Defense Fund attorney who is representing DeJohn.

“There’s no objectivity to [the old policy],” Hacker said. “Temple did the right thing by changing [it], but the only reason they changed it was because of Mr. DeJohn’s lawsuit.”

Hacker said it could take three to six months for the court to make a decision.

University counsel George Moore said the old sexual harassment policy, which was developed through a university-wide committee including faculty, administrators and student consultations, contained language similar to the Equal Opportunity Act.

“The District Court found that Temple’s policy was overly broad based on a Third Circuit decision involving a civility code in primary education out of the State College School District,” Moore said. “Temple’s sexual harassment [code], which is not a civility code [or a speech code], is a code addressing illegal sexual harassing conduct.”

Moore said the outcome of the case is difficult to predict.

“One [option] is to seek reconsideration by the Third Circuit. Although, if the Third Circuit believes that the case was decided with regards to State College School District, the Third Circuit might feel bound to follow that,” he said.

“If the decision comes out based on that prior case, they don’t have any choice,” Moore said. “It might be a waste of time to ask them to reconsider. In that case, either side that is unhappy … can seek certiorari from the [U.S.] Supreme Court, [but] the Supreme Court only takes a small percentage of cases that way.”

In the same suit, DeJohn accused Temple of retaliation, which prevented him from graduating, and specifically sued the university itself, former President David Adamany, former history department chair Dr. Richard Immerman and history professor Dr. Gregory Urwin.

Moore said the court properly dismissed DeJohn’s claims of retaliation, as he did not meet university standards.

“With respect to his claim about the university sexual harassment policies, his claims really had nothing to do with the sexual harassment policy as it existed at the time,” Moore said. “It was not even a pertinent part of his claims of retaliation.”

DeJohn said his problems with Temple began when he took a leave of absence from working toward his military history degree to serve in Bosnia after the Spring 2002 semester.

When he returned back to the United States in March 2003, he learned that he was expelled from the university for failing to properly document his leave.

“This was my ‘welcome home’ from Temple,” DeJohn said. “‘Welcome home, you’re kicked out.’”
DeJohn was readmitted into the university and completed his class requirements. He began to research and write his graduate thesis, the last step in obtaining his degree.

“Because of Sept. 11, my whole life was disrupted,” DeJohn said. “I just wanted to finish my degree.”

When the primary reader of his thesis, history professor Dr. Jay Lockenour, was ready to sign off on it, DeJohn had one more hurdle to overcome – a secondary reader, Urwin, also had to approve it.

“DeJohn could have easily executed the revisions I recommended for his flawed [Master of Arts] thesis in two weeks and walked away from Temple with his degree years ago,” Urwin wrote in an e-mail, adding that he is currently helping four service members obtain degrees.

“One of the wildest charges DeJohn has circulated since the trial is that I have had him blackballed by various potential employers. How in the world would I know where he was applying for work?”

DeJohn said that though Urwin did not approve his thesis, Lockenour advised him to register to graduate in May 2005 anyway.
Although he never graduated, he said Temple reported to his student loan companies that he obtained a diploma, causing his loans to default, damaging his credit.

“As a veteran, I feel really strongly about civil rights, freedom of speech and First Amendment rights,” DeJohn said. “I think I have a responsibility to defend them. I like the irony here. I come home to Philadelphia, the cradle of democracy, and Temple is denying me my civil rights.”

“Before the disagreements, I had no problems as a student,” DeJohn said. “My cumulative GPA was a 3.2 or 3.3 in graduate school.”
DeJohn said he believes that his issues with the history department stemmed from his objections to receiving anti-war e-mails for weekly Dissent in America teach-ins sponsored by the department while he served overseas.

He said he is not sure what he could win in the case. He said one possibility is declaratory damages, in which Temple would be required to acknowledge that it violated the law.

“If we prevail on the First Amendment [issue], the usual award is $1. It’s a totally symbolic award,” he said.

He said he is ready to take the case as far as needed to ensure First Amendment rights for Temple students.

“If someone is hit by lightning once, it may be an accident,” he said. “If they’re hit seven times, something’s going on. I really have faith that this story will get out and that justice will be done – on the big picture level and my own personal individual level.”

Morgan A. Zalot can be reached at morgan.zalot@temple.edu.