Administrators at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo dug themselves into a nasty procedural, legal, and ethical hole last year when they went after a conservative white male student for posting a flyer that offended a group of black students. FIRE got involved, and as a result the case of Steve Hinkle, who was sentenced to write letters of apology to the offended students and threatened with expulsion if he failed to comply, was all over the media and the blogosphere during the summer.

Usually when the bad press starts and administrators have no place to hide, they back down. Not so with the intrepid folks at Cal Poly, who defended their decision to punish Hinkle for totally legitimate behavior by simply accusing FIRE and Hinkle of lying about the facts. When FIRE posted transcripts of the seven-hour hearing to which Cal Poly's disciplinary vanguard subjected Hinkle, it became eminently clear who was doing the lying. But still the admins held out, motivated at this point either by extremely poor counsel or extraordinary powers of psychic denial. All the while, they were digging themselves ever deeper into that procedural, legal, and ethical hole I mentioned above. And yesterday, they hit bottom.

Yesterday, FIRE legal network attorney Carol Sobel and the Center for Individual Rights filed suit against the president of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and all other administrators who were involved in prosecuting Hinkle. Coordinated by FIRE, the suit seeks to clear Hinkle's record, to confirm that the school's decision to punish him for his protected expression was indeed unconstitutional, and to win punitive and other damages. Hinkle's legal team also filed for a temporary restraining order that would prevent Cal Poly from enforcing the policies they invoked to punish Hinkle.

The Cal Poly administration is no doubt deeply offended by Hinkle's latest "disruption."