Two students filed a lawsuit against the University of Colorado on Monday alleging free speech and due process violations following a pro-Palestine protest.

The two CU Boulder students, Mari Rosenfeld and Max Inman, were banned from campus for nearly two months after participating in a pro-Palestine protest on Oct. 3. The exclusion banned the students from campus except to attend classes. The lawsuit claims the action was retaliatory, taken without a hearing or opportunity to appeal and prevented the students from engaging in First Amendment-protected activity during that time.

“We feel like we’ve been wronged by the university and we need some sort of recompense to some degree,” Inman said. “I think what happened to us was unfair and sets a terrible precedent for how it treats activists and how it treats people who are challenging the university and its views.”CU Boulder spokesperson Nicole Mueksch said the university has not yet been served the lawsuit.

“Once it has been served, the campus must review it and determine the appropriate course of action,” Mueksch wrote in an email. “As such, we are unable to comment further at this time.”

Rosenfeld and Inman are involved in the Students for Justice in Palestine student organization, which was also placed in bad standing after it held the Oct. 3 protest.

“Students do need to take action and they need to have the right to take action without being severely prosecuted by the university,” Rosenfeld said. “It falls within everybody’s First Amendment right. A world where you stifle any dissent against the status quo doesn’t allow for universities with free academic and political discussion. It’s frankly setting a dangerous precedent.”

The students attended a protest organized by Students for Justice in Palestine at a career fair hosting military and defense contractors on Oct 3. Inman was a participant and Rosenfeld was a marshal for the protest, which is someone who communicates with any administration or police if necessary and ensures the safety of everyone present.

About 25 people participated in the protest held outside of the University Memorial Center where the career fair was held, Rosenfeld said. About 12 to 14 protesters went inside the job fair in the Glenn Miller Ballroom, she said, and spent about three to five minutes chanting before the group received an official order to leave, which they did.

The next day, on Oct. 4, Inman and Rosenfeld received notices from the university that they may have violated the student code of conduct and would be banned from campus until otherwise notified. Rosenfeld’s letter, which she provided to the Daily Camera, said she allegedly violated student conduct policies surrounding the disruption of a CU Boulder activity, unauthorized access to property and fire safety. It said people within the career fair felt unsafe when the protesters came in.

A University of Colorado Boulder police report, provided to the Daily Camera by Rosenfeld, was filed by a CU Boulder event coordinator on Oct. 10 against the two students for trespassing.

“It was astonishing to see the unnecessary escalation that they initiated with the code of conduct letter, and it sucked because I was banned from campus and wasn’t able to participate in any extracurriculars,” Rosenfeld said. “I wasn’t able to go to office hours for my professors, I wasn’t able to go to any events that are held across campus, some of which could’ve given me extra credit in my classes. It definitely screwed up my academics for a little bit.”

The students were also unable to work their on-campus jobs unless some duties could be done remotely. Both of them felt financial impacts during the ban.

Inman and Rosenfeld’s ban from campus was lifted in mid-November. The students’ attorney Dan Williams said the video footage from the protest shows the students did not pose any threat.

“It’s pretty clear now that we’ve seen all the evidence that they have not violated any student conduct rules,” Williams said, adding, “There was no plausible basis for these two students to ever be excluded from campus other than to suppress their speech.”

The Daily Camera submitted a public records request for the video footage which was denied by the university citing student privacy laws.

Rosenfeld and Inman believe they were the only two students who faced this action because they were the only ones in the protest group that the school could identify. At the beginning of the semester, the two represented Students for Justice in Palestine during a meeting with the chancellor.

“Their identification and willingness to punish anybody who they had conceptualized as being involved was kind of absurd, considering the role in which I was there was to ensure the safety of everybody,” Rosenfeld said.

The lawsuit claims CU’s policies and restrictions on free speech violate the First Amendment by prohibiting or impeding pro-Palestine protests on campus. By banning the students from campus without a hearing or opportunity to appeal, the lawsuit claims, the university violated the students’ 14th Amendment right to due process. It also alleges that CU Boulder violated a Colorado statute that protects expressive speech on university campuses when it denied the student-protesters the right to use campus facilities for free-speech purposes.

While the students are now allowed back on campus, they said their cases with the dean’s office for reportedly violating the student code of conduct are still ongoing. Both students said they have attended multiple student conduct hearings and meetings in the last few months.

“The further they extend it, the further they keep me on my toes thinking about the case, when it’s going to be decided and what the potential punishment is,” Rosenfeld said, adding, “I think they believe the further they drag it out the less interested or the more apprehensive I’m going to be about being an active member on campus in the CU Boulder activist community.”

According to CU Boulder’s student code of conduct, a violation could result in a warning, probation, loss of good standing, community re-engagement program, suspension or expulsion.

“It just feels like a vast overreaction and to me implies that the school feels very threatened by pro-Palestine activism or activism that is advocating for Palestinian rights,” Inman said. “I would argue that is mainly stemming from CU Boulder’s stake in maintaining its connection to Israel and the United States military industrial complex.”

Inman said it’s unacceptable to punish and threaten students who peacefully protest.

“If CU Boulder gets away with doing this to students and then doesn’t face any backlash for it, then they basically have no reason not to use it on future activists,” Inman said. “Whether it be on similar pro-Palestine stuff or really any subversive social change.”