Southern Illinois University Exiles Pastor for Personal Conversations About Faith on Campus

For nearly three decades, our client has peacefully engaged in constitutionally protected religious speech on Southern Illinois University’s (SIU) campus. His approach is remarkably straightforward and nonintrusive – he sets up in various public spaces on campus and offers students a small monetary incentive to ask questions about the Bible, which he then answers directly from Scripture. He uses no amplification. He simply has personal conversations about the Bible with willing participants on campus.

Yet time and again, SIU officials have suppressed his speech. In 2021, university officials threatened him with arrest and forced him to relocate to SIU’s designated free speech area. A year later, police officers informed him he must move to the free speech area simply because he was talking about his faith. In 2024, following faculty complaints, he was once again forced to relocate based on the religious content of his speech.

We sent SIU a demand letter seeking written assurances that our client-pastor may exercise his First Amendment rights on campus property. Take action with us and add your name to the petition: Defeat the Left’s War Against Christians.

Most recently, on October 1, the pattern repeated itself. Our client was outside an area known as Faner Plaza when an SIU official approached and told him he could not be there. The official called the police. Officers arrived and informed our client that someone had complained about protesters who needed to move to a designated free speech area – this was a lie – to be clear, our client was not engaged in any protest or demonstration. He was simply speaking with students about his Christian faith. Our client was then forced to relocate to a “free speech area” or face arrest.

This is textbook viewpoint discrimination. SIU’s own policy expressly permits free expression throughout campus property, not merely within designated zones. The policy explicitly states that individuals may engage in noncommercial free expression on university property in accordance with basic standards of civility and respect. The policy’s plain language permits free expression across campus – yet, in reality, it’s anything but free expression.

SIU officials have systematically singled out our client for relocation based solely on the religious nature of his message. Meanwhile, other individuals and groups engage in various forms of expression throughout campus without being forced into marginal speech zones.

Universities are supposed to be marketplaces of ideas where diverse viewpoints can be expressed and debated freely. We’ve seen radical activists shut down campus operations at UCLA, Columbia, and Harvard, while spineless administrators stood by, oftentimes enabling the activists. Yet when a Christian pastor peacefully engages students in conversations about his faith, without amplification or disruption, university police threaten him with arrest and force him into remote areas on campus.

The double standard couldn’t be clearer – elite university officials believe violence deserves tolerance, but religious speech must be shut down.

The Supreme Court has made clear that excluding religious viewpoints from an otherwise open forum violates the Free Speech Clause. The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals has specifically warned public universities against yielding to a “heckler’s veto” that infringes on a speaker’s free speech rights. When a university decides to permit its open spaces to be used by some speakers but excludes others because it disapproves of their message, it runs afoul of the First Amendment.

SIU officials allowing others to engage in free speech across campus while explicitly removing a pastor to marginal speech zones based on the religious nature of his message constitutes precisely the kind of viewpoint discrimination and “heckler’s veto” that courts have condemned. The Constitution does not permit universities to exile religious speakers to remote corners of campus simply because some find their message disagreeable.

We await SIU’s response to our demand letter. We are seeking written assurances that our client will be able to exercise his First Amendment rights on campus property on equal terms with other speakers, which is consistent with SIU’s own stated policy. In addition, we also demand that officials not relocate, remove, or otherwise restrict his speech based on its religious content.

State colleges and universities are not immune from the sweep of the First Amendment. If we do not receive a favorable response, we will be prepared to pursue any and all legal action.

Take action with us in our fight for religious liberty on college campuses across America. Add your name to the petition: Defeat the Left’s War Against Christians.