Kellogg Community College Had a Group of Students Arrested Simply for Handing out the U.S. Constitution, claimed they were trespassing at the college they pay for

A Michigan community college faces a lawsuit over a U.S. Constitution giveaway that ended with its students arrested for trespassing.



Kellogg Community College students Brandon Withers and Michelle Gregoire were arrested Sept. 20, 2015, in Battle Creek after they refused to stop handing out copies of the U.S. Constitution on campus. Officials cited the school’s Solicitation Policy, which requires permission for such behavior, before having the Young Americans for Liberty members and a friend arrested.


Alliance Defending Freedom, a nonprofit legal organization that “advocates for the right of people to freely live out their faith,” filed a lawsuit on their behalf Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan.


“Today’s college students will be tomorrow’s legislators, judges, commissioners, and voters,” ADF Senior Counsel Casey Mattox said in a statement released Wednesday. “That’s why it’s so important that public universities model the First Amendment values they are supposed to be teaching to students, and why it should disturb everyone that KCC and many other colleges are communicating to a generation that the Constitution doesn’t matter.”


ADF’s lawsuit claims KCC’s “Speech Zone Policy” and the wording of its code of conduct create an unconstitutional veto over speech. The plaintiffs also claim the school selectively enforces its Solicitation Policy. They cite a 2015 instance where members of an LGBT group Spectrum were allegedly allowed to distribute literature without an “information table.”