Pro-cop coffee shop owner awarded $4 million in free speech lawsuit against university

An Idaho jury awarded a coffee shop owner $4 million in a lawsuit against Boise State University administrators, ruling that her First Amendment rights were violated over a reaction to her public support for law enforcement.

The jury of 12 residents of Ada County sided with Sarah Fendley who owns Big City Coffee in her suit against the BSU officials after she was forced to close a shop on campus in 2020 due to backlash over the pro-police “thin blue line” emblem that has been displayed on the front window of the downtown Boise location.

(Video: KTVB)

In a unanimous ruling, the jury found that Fendley’s First Amendment rights had been violated, awarding her $3 million for “lost business, reputational damage, mental and emotional distress and personal humiliation,” according to the Idaho Statesman. Fendley was also awarded an additional $1 million in punitive damages.

“Sarah got her day after all these years,” Fendley’s lawyer Michael Roe told reporters following the verdict. “We’re very pleased.”

The campus shop opened in September 2020, a period of racial unrest and anti-police activism following the death of lifelong thug George Floyd who perished while resisting arrest during an encounter with Minneapolis, MN police on Memorial Day weekend, sparking a violent wave of national race riots.

Fendley was forced to shutter the Boise State shop just a month later after a group of students protested her pro-police views expressed by the 3-by-5-inch sticker at the main location.

She sued the university for $10 million after the closure, “arguing administrators conspired to retaliate against her for expressing pro-police views on social media,” according to Fox News.

“I hope y’all don’t go there if you truly support your bipoc peers and other students, staff, and faculty,” one student said in a social media post on Snapchat after the campus location’s opening.

After a screenshot of the post was shared with Fendley, she responded with her own posts on Instagram and Facebook explaining her support for the police. At the time, she was engaged to a former cop who had been paralyzed in a gunfight with a criminal.

Boise State officials then called a hasty meeting with her over the “firestorm” that she allegedly created with her posts. Fendley claimed that her contract was terminated because of her support for law enforcement.

“Hours before the meeting started, administrators were working on a press release about the business leaving campus,” Roe said, according to Fox News, “making it clear they had a single outcome in mind.”

“Senior administration at BSU caved to a very small number of student activists,” he told Fox News Digital.

“I was completely blindsided,” Fendley said during opening arguments. “I had no idea that there was any situation brewing and I was told there was a firestorm heading my way.”

However, the university’s attorney argued that it was Fendley who was guilty of suppressing free speech for wanting the school to punish students using the student code of conduct against them for criticizing the business.

“Freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom from consequences,” Keely Duke said in court. “The First Amendment protects everyone. It protects Fendley’s right to express her support for the thin blue line. It also supports, though, anyone’s right to not support Big City Coffee.”

During closing arguments, Roe told jurors that the state’s largest university “mistreated a small business instead of doing the right thing.”

“It’s what makes this country unique, the right to speak, and think, and believe freely, without the fear some governor actor is gonna punish you for it, or some government agency,” he added.

Chris Donaldson

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