This kind of behavior from the government is exactly what free speech is all about. It’s blatantly illegal for the government to censor people’s speech. This isn’t a story about a person trespassing and the local government reacting — that would be like looking at a program and declaring the final operation in a sequence the only thing the program does.
The actual free speech violation is the federal government withholding research funding based upon what the organizations and people receiving the funding say publicly. This person was pointing out what the Republicans are doing right now.
but unfortunately, due to deficiencies and how the American legal system works, this person can’t actually sue the government for mass violation of constitutional rights. Despite all of us being harmed by what the Republicans are doing, we wouldn’t actually be able to show “standing” to have our suit be heard.
Of course, we run up into the larger, structural problem in American law: we’d have to be obscenely rich to even be able to sue. In such a Court) case could take years before any action could even start.
The American Diabetes Association is not a state actor here. If the conference runners could be sued, the lawsuit would be over a contract violation (if there is one) by the ADA regarding the conditions for attending the conference, not about freedom of speech. If the ADA did violate its contract in removing the researchers, then the police would have violated the researchers' 1st Amendment rights, but qualified immunity likely applies.
The phrasing seems to infer that they were vocally or otherwise disruptive in a way that meaningfully+negatively impacted the conference.
The reality is they had
handed out copies of an editorial
that criticizes the administration's cuts to biomedical research
...when they were approached by security guards and police officers
not just biomedical research, but specifically diabetes research. it is reasonable for forbid diabetes researchers from discussing their funding issues during a conference specifically for them?