MICHIGAN (Dispatches) – 
Current and former students at the University of Michigan have filed a lawsuit against the school alleging it disproportionately disciplined pro-Palestinian protesters and violated their free speech rights.
The federal lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court in Detroit. The plaintiffs allege that the school violated the students’ constitutional rights to free speech, due process and equal protection under the law.
The six current and former students also allege that the University of Michigan initiated discipline proceedings against the students for speech-related conduct that other groups weren’t punished for.
The plaintiffs also alleged that students were targeted with different degrees of disciplinary proceedings based on race. They also allege they were fired from campus jobs and blacklisted for future employment.
“The egregious Constitutional violations outlined in this suit are merely a fraction of the repression the University of Michigan has subjected student activists like us to because of our assertion that the University should not financially invest in, and materially benefit from, the genocide of the Palestinian people,” graduate student and plaintiff Nora Hilgart-Griff told the Detroit News.
“That the University has departed from its longstanding allowance of student protest–even protest that may be critical of University policies or leadership–for this issue alone is evidence of the way the Palestinian people are systematically and intentionally dehumanized by the countries who fund and enable their dispossession and deaths.” 
Campus protests against Israel erupted after it launched a devastating genocidal campaign on the Gaza Strip on October 7. Both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have said Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. 
The campus protests were widespread during the 2023 school year, and have continued this year. Rights groups say there has been a crackdown on free speech by universities and the U.S. government.
The University of Michigan lawsuit is the latest component of the campus protest movement, with current and former students alleging that their schools’ behavior violated constitutional rights, and potentially hindered their post-graduate career courses.
In September 2024, Students for Justice in Palestine at the University of Maryland sued their school to hold an interfaith vigil on October 7 to mourn those killed in Gaza. A federal judge ruled that the school could not block the event.