A student at the County College of Morris (CCM) won a legal victory over wokeness earlier this week.
America First Legal (AFL), along with co-counsel Jonathan F. Mitchell and Wally Zimolong, secured a stipulated final order for Kombe Sefelino, who was suspended and removed from campus at the County College of Morris (CCM) for sharing the Bible on campus.
AFL sued CCM in March of last year after complaints to college administrators that Mr. Sefelino criticized homosexuality. The college issued a written warning declaring Mr. Sefelino’s reading from the Bible was “hate speech” that “demonstrated a bias against the LGBQT+ community.” The warning also told Mr. Sefelino that his statements violated New Jersey law.
Mr. Sefelino refused to self-censor in response to these threats and continued to teach the Bible on campus. After Mr. Sefelino repeated the Bible’s teachings on homosexuality, the college pronounced him guilty of “preaching hate speech on campus in reference to homosexuality and homosexuals” and suspended him for eleven days. Incredibly, CCM—a public taxpayer-funded institution bound by the Constitution’s free speech and religious freedom guarantees—threatened to expel him if he continued preaching from the Bible. Without evincing any sense of irony, the college’s letter states: “We accept everyone here. There is no place for bias at CCM. You should think hard about whether this is the best environment for you.”
The stipulated final order includes, among other relief, permission for Sefelino to re-enroll at the school without penalty.
“America First Legal is proud to have won this important legal victory for free speech, vindicating our client’s rights, wiping his academic record clean, obtaining an admission of wrongdoing from the defendants, and ensuring just compensatory damages for what our client has so wrongly suffered and endured. Let this be a lesson to those colleges who would trample on the rights of Christian students — or anyone who would trample on Christians in America,“ said America First Legal President Stephen Miller.
Assemblyman Jay Webber (R-26), who is also an attorney, celebrated the outcome on X:
.@America1stLegal vindicates the liberty rights of a @CCM_edu student the College wrongly suspended.
CCM called it “hate speech” — the Judge called it free speech.
CCM’s woke bureaucrats cost $35k in damages & $45k in attorney fees. https://t.co/Lhu2PEGnNr
— Jay Webber (@JayWebberNJ) February 9, 2024
