By SAMANTHA FRANK

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Nearly two months after Palm Beach State College was thrust into the limelight for kicking a student off campus who was promoting a conservative organization, the school is being sued.

Attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian legal group, filed suit today in U.S. District Court on behalf of Young Americans for Freedom, the conservative organization that the student was promoting. The suit alleges that college employees violated the constitutional rights of the grou

p and its members.

The suit lists the other plaintiffs as Palm Beach State student Christina Beattie and two other members of the organization.

College spokeswoman Grace Truman declined to comment on the suit.

“We do not comment on any active litigation,” she said.

The dispute caused a national ruckus after Young Americans for Freedom’s Florida chapter posted a video on its website showing a police officer asking Beattie to remove her table at a campus rush event, where student clubs recruit new members. Beattie and the organization’s Florida president, Daniel Diaz, were displaying literature critical of President Obama’s health care legislation, stimulus program and the nation’s “unsustainable welfare state.”

College officials said the group was asked to leave because it was not registered as a campus club – a requirement for setting up a table at the event. But Beattie said an administrator had given her permission to attend.

At the time, Diaz said his organization had had similar problems at Florida Atlantic University’s Broward campus and the University of South Florida.

The suit alleges that Palm Beach State College also has denied Beattie permission to distribute fliers at its campuses in Palm Beach Gardens, Belle Glade, Boca Raton and suburban Lake Worth.

The suit says Palm Beach State’s policies violate the plaintiffs’ free speech, free association and equal protection rights as guaranteed by the federal and state constitutions.

“Public colleges should function as our nation’s marketplace of ideas, not as prisons of censorship,” said Frederick Nelson, an attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund.

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