Student Protesters Banned from University of Michigan Campuses

Since Fall 2023, college campuses across the country have seen a spike in protests in support of Palestinian human rights. At the University of Michigan, administrators have responded to political speech and protests related to Palestine with increasingly repressive policies and actions, including shutting down email listservs on which the war was being discussed, removing anti-war posters from graduate students’ office windows, canceling a student election on competing resolutions about the crisis, and heavy-handed police responses to organized protests. In particular, the University began to increasingly “trespass”—i.e., ban—students and other community members from its entire campus based on a single allegation of misconduct at a single protest. In December 2023 and April 2024, the ACLU of Michigan sent public letters to the University of Michigan expressing its concern about these escalating patterns of the University stifling its students’ speech and advocacy. But the University’s repressive actions continued. In February 2025, the ACLU of Michigan, the Sugar Law Center, and cooperating attorneys at Schulz Ghannam sued the University on behalf of five protestors who were banned from all University of Michigan property after participating in a protest. The lawsuit challenges the University’s practice of liberally issuing trespass bans to protestors, alleging that the practice violates the plaintiffs’ First Amendment and Due Process rights. The lawsuit was amended in August 2025 to include other protestors who were banned from campus in a similar fashion after participating in a protest related to the University’s plan to build a data center affiliated with the military. The lawsuit is ongoing. (Zou v. Grasso; ACLU Attorneys Ramis Wadood, Phil Mayor, Bonsitu Kitaba-Gaviglio, Syeda Davidson, and Dan Korobkin; Co-counsel Liz Jacob and John Philo of Sugar Law Center, and Amanda Ghannam and Jack Schulz of Schulz Ghannam PLLC).