Although expressing reservations, a Southern District judge has declined to dismiss a claim by students and alumni of the City College of New York that the school violated their First Amendment rights when it removed a plaque naming a room for two former students now living as fugitives in Cuba — one of whom had been convicted of bomb making and the other who had been imprisoned for killing a police officer.
“There is surely a serious question as to whether the students had a constitutional right to name the community center after two criminals” and “in effect commemorat[e] such criminals,” Judge Thomas P. Griesa noted.
