Portland, OR — Illegal censorship comes at a high price. The University of Oregon just learned that the hard way.

In a resounding victory for First Amendment rights, Judge John V. Acosta awarded $191,000 in attorney fees to the legal team of Institute for Free Speech client Professor Bruce Gilley yesterday. The fee award follows the March 2025 settlement in which the university acknowledged that Gilley’s speech should not have been censored and agreed to implement significant pro-speech reforms.

The awarded fees will be paid by the school’s insurer, United Educators, with $147,070 to be paid to the Institute for Free Speech and $43,930 to be paid to the Angus Lee Law Firm. The fees, combined with the more than $533,000 the university had already paid its own attorneys by November 2024, bring the total public cost of defending the university’s unconstitutional censorship to at least $724,000.

These costs of almost three-quarters of a million dollars all ultimately stem from the university’s stubborn defense of DEI officials blocking Gilley for simply posting “all men are created equal.” This figure also doesn’t include billing after last November, the full scope of which would push the cost higher.

“This fee award reflects the substantial resources required to vindicate fundamental constitutional rights in the digital age, as well as the vigor with which the University of Oregon chose to defend unconstitutional policies,” noted Institute for Free Speech Senior Attorney Del Kolde. “The university made a costly decision to prioritize DEI principles over constitutional principles, aggressively litigating this case for nearly three years rather than acknowledging the obvious—that blocking someone for quoting the Declaration of Independence violates the First Amendment.”

Local counsel Angus Lee added, “Oregon taxpayers and UO alumni should question why university officials spent such enormous sums defending the indefensible, especially when the university ultimately agreed to the very reforms Professor Gilley had sought from the beginning.”

The lawsuit began after the University of Oregon’s Division of Equity and Inclusion blocked Gilley from its official Twitter (now X) account in June 2022 after Gilley wrote “all men are created equal” when he reposted a university “racism interrupter” post. After significant litigation, including a successful appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and a decisive preliminary injunction ruling in July 2024, the parties reached a settlement in March 2025.

The settlement required the university to implement comprehensive reforms to its social media guidelines, including:

• • Prohibiting viewpoint-based censorship
  • Creating an appeals process for those who believe they were wrongfully blocked
  • Conducting annual First Amendment training for social media managers
  • Maintaining judicial oversight for 180 days to ensure implementation

Professor Gilley noted, “Our victory establishes important protections for free speech in the University of Oregon’s digital spaces. The university could have avoided significant public expense by simply respecting the Constitution from the beginning. Perhaps the high price of this defeat will make UO and other public universities think twice before violating First Amendment rights.”

To read the full settlement agreement, click here. To learn more about the case, Gilley v. Stabin, and to access client photos for media use, please see the full case page here.

About the Institute for Free Speech

The Institute for Free Speech promotes and defends the political speech rights to freely speak, assemble, publish, and petition the government guaranteed by the First Amendment.