Skidmore
Skidmore v. The Regents of the University of California
Opinion
Trial Court Opinion
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA SAN JOSE DIVISION 6 ALLISON SKIDMORE, Case No. 20-cv-06415-BLF
Plaintiff,
ORDER GRANTING MOTION TO
v. DISMISS AND DEFERRING RULING
ON SPECIAL MOTION TO STRIKE
THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, et al., 11 Defendants. [Re: ECF 29] 12 Plaintiff Allison Skidmore, an animal rights activist and Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Santa Cruz, published a Facebook post on her personal page about the treatment of bears in China that was considered inflammatory and highly offensive by the unintended recipients of the post. She is now suing Defendants Gregory Gilbert, department chair of the University’s Environmental Studies Department; Madeleine Fairbairn, Flora Lu, and S. Ravi Rajan, department faculty members (collectively, “Individual Defendants”); and the Regents of the University of California (“the Regents”) for violations of her First and Fourteenth Amendment rights under 42 U.S.C. § 1983…