SANTA ANA, Calif. – The Muslim students stood up to shout last year at the Israeli ambassador, halting for 20 minutes his talk on U.S.-Israel relations to a California university audience — a protest that left several students facing charges and has evolved into a broader legal tussle over whose free-speech rights were violated.
Opening statements were scheduled Wednesday in the trial of 10 students on misdemeanor charges of conspiring to disturb a meeting and disturbing a meeting for interrupting Ambassador Michael Oren’s speech at the University of California, Irvine in February 2010.
Students claim they had a right to protest. But Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas contends that right ended when it infringed on the wishes of hundreds of members of the public who had come to hear Oren.
The case has generated an impassioned debate about free speech and raised questions about prosecutorial discretion as some members of the public — including some who disapproved of the Muslim students’ actions — say student protests are nothing new and the case is a colossal waste of taxpayers’ money.
The students, many who have since graduated from college, say they are being singled out because they are Muslim and that similar protests on
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