A Yale Law School bipartisan panel discussing civil liberties was disrupted by over a hundred jeering students, who intimidated attendees to a degree that police had to be called in.
The ruckus was captured in footage obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
The panel, hosted by the Yale Federalist Society on 10 March, featured Monica Miller of the progressive American Humanist Association and Kristen Waggoner of the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF). The latter is a conservative nonprofit that promotes religious liberty and is known for its role in the Supreme Court case Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission in 2018.
A the time, the court, using the free exercise clause of the First Amendment (as applied to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment) upheld the right of Jack Phillips, owner of the Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, Colorado, to refuse to custom design a cake for a same-sex wedding.
When Professor Kate Stith introduced Kristen Waggoner, the students stood up, holding signs attacking the ADF, with one protester heard threatening to "literally fight you, b*tch".
As Stith tried to remind the students of Yale's free speech policies, barring protests that "interfere with speakers' ability to be heard and of community members to listen," the heckling intensified.
Several students could be seen with their middle fingers raised, jeering that the disturbance was "free speech." Stith eventually warned the crowd, "I'm going to have to ask you to leave, or help you leave."
As they exited the event, the rioting students congregated in the hall outside, stomping, pounding the walls, and chanting "protect trans kids." Two members of the Federalist Society later said they had been grabbed and jostled while trying to leave.
"It was disturbing to witness law students whipped into a mindless frenzy… I did not feel it was safe to get out of the room without security," Waggoner was cited as saying.
Finally, police officers were summoned to escort Waggoner and Miller out of the building. It was not clarified who exactly placed the call.
After the incident, over 60 percent of the law school's student body signed off on an open letter supporting the "peaceful student protesters." According to the signatories, they were the ones who had felt “imperilled by the presence of police.”
The letter also slammed Kate Stith for telling the protesters to "grow up," and the Federalist Society for hosting the event, which "profoundly undermined our community's values of equity and inclusivity."
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