I wrote about the court decision in favor of plaintiff back in August; now I see that the parties have settled, and are asking for court approval of the following consent order:
1. Defendants are hereby permanently enjoined from censoring Schmidt’s views on the sexual identity of Artemis Langford and from applying the one-year table ban on Schmidt that was initiated on December 7, 2022.
2. This injunction does not diminish Defendants’ ability to sanction possible future misbehavior by Schmidt, such as continuing to engage with students who do not wish to speak with him.
3. Defendants shall pay certain attorney fees and expenses in the amount of $35,000 within 20 days of this Order….
Here’s my original post:
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From Schmidt v. Siedel, decided yesterday by Judge Nancy Freudenthal (D. Wyo.) (see also the coverage in Cowboy State Daily (Clair McFarland), and this post about a pseudonymity issue in a lawsuit stemming from the sorority controversy):
Schmidt is an elder at the Laramie Faith Community Church…. He has reserved a table in the UW Union breezeway on a regular basis for the past 17 years. The UW Union allows campus groups and various outside organizations to utilize breezeway tables to communicate with students. The breezeway tables provide access to a high degree of student pedestrian traffic. Schmidt uses his breezeway table to display various DVDs and books. He also places on his table a Velcro-backed sign with plastic lettering to display different messages.
According to UW Officials, they have over the years warned Schmidt to stay behind his breezeway table and not engage in a confrontational manner towards passersby. The University alleges it has received and documented complaints from students that Schmidt “got in people’s faces” while trying to talk to them and chased after students who refused to speak with him. Schmidt states that he was not aware of any student complaints to University staff about him and received no warning from the University regarding student complaints.
In September of 2022, a UW student named Artemis Langford joined a UW sorority. Langford was born a biological male but identifies as female. In October, the UW university newspaper, the Branding Iron, ran a story about Langford joining the sorority, and included quotes from Langford. Other publications, including the Cowboy State Daily, Washington Examiner, and National Review, ran articles about Langford as the first openly transgender student in UW history to join a sorority.
Schmidt disagrees with the propriety of transgender students joining sororities, and on December 2, 2022, he placed a sign at his breezeway table in the Union stating, “God created male and female and Artemis Langford is a male.” Various students gathered in front of his table in an attempt to block others, and Langford, from seeing Schmidt’s sign. {Artemis Langford is both a UW student and an employee in the Wyoming Union.} These students engaged in tense debate with Schmidt.