Student Arrested For Handing Out Copies Of The Constitution

(Republicaninformer.com)- The Liberty Justice Center has filed an appeal on behalf of a former Arizona State University student who was convicted of trespassing on school property after he handed out constitutions on the campus.

The LJC sent out a press release last week saying they were representing Tim Tizon, who is a former student at ASU. In March of 2022, he refused to stop handing out pamphlets of the U.S. Constitution at the school’s campus in Tempe.

The press release said he was doing this on behalf of the Young Americans for Liberty, a libertarian student organization on campus. LJC is representing Tizon pro bono in his appeal with the Maricopa County Circuit Court.

When he was arrested, Tizon was still a student at ASU. In other words, he had every right to be on campus.

In a recent interview with the Daily Caller News Foundation, a staff attorney at the LJC, Reilly Stephens, said:

“If free speech means anything, it means that in a public area, at a public university, a student should not be arrested for handing out copies of the U.S. Constitution.”

On the day he was arrested, Tizon set up a table at the North Plaza on campus, which had the YAL logo on it. He was just distributing pamphlets when he was told repeatedly that his setup violated the “reservation policy” that the school had.

In essence, if Tizon wanted to continue setting up shop and handing out pamphlets, he had to do so in a zone that was designated for free speech off in one isolated section of the campus.

In the LJC press release, Tizon said:

“Universities are supposed to be the epicenter of the marketplace of ideas. ASU has let me down and every other student, too, by placing its bureaucracy ahead of our First Amendment rights.”

Some colleges and universities have set up these free speech zones in recent years so that students and groups could exercise their right to free speech in public. However, many free speech activists have criticized them, saying they’re against the Constitution since they limit a person’s free expression to only one place. This is especially true, critics say, on the campuses of public schools.

The director of media relations for YAL, Carter Quill, told DCNF recently:

“It is absolutely silly that students have to worry about getting arrested for standing in the wrong patch of grass. Speech codes like this treat students like babies who aren’t capable of hearing a political idea without having a guidance counselor around. People go to college to learn, not be coddled, and Tim Tizon deserves some justice for both this unjust arrest, and for having to put up with trigger happy campus administrators who need to learn their place.”

Unfortunately, Stephens said that cases like this one involving Tizon are commonplace on college campuses around the country. Many free speech advocates have had to fight for their constitutional rights in recent years as the schools have looked to stamp out this speech – especially if it has a conservative lean.