Ohio State sued for denying Richard Spencer a place to speak

The booking agent for white nationalist Richard Spencer files a federal lawsuit against The Ohio State University for refusing a request to rent space on campus for a speech by the controversial far-right figure.

The lawsuit comes after the university informed Cameron Padgett, a graduate student at Georgia State University who handles Spencer’s speaking arrangements, that the request to rent space was denied due to the “substantial risk to public safety.”

Ohio State issued the denial a day after Spencer appeared at the University of Florida, which brought hundreds of protesters and cost the Gainesville university more than $500,000 for security for the event. Prior to the speech, the governor of Florida also declared a state of emergency in the county where the campus is located.

Ohio State, located in Columbus, has more than 2,700 Jewish undergraduates on campus, comprising about 6 percent of the student population. There also are about 350 Jewish graduate students on campus.

— JTA