On Sept. 16, political science and philosophy senior Gregorio Olivares Gutierrez filed a lawsuit against UTD on First Amendment grounds.
Gutierrez claims that the school retaliated against him for exercising speech guaranteed by the First Amendment during his time as The Mercury’s Editor-in-Chief. As editor, he added a disclaimer to a letter to the editor written by psychology senior Jade Steinberg. After Steinberg brought a Title VI complaint alleging national origin discrimination, UTD gave Gutierrez a two-year deferred suspension and an educational sanction on media ethics.
The suit, Gutierrez v. Moghe, was organized by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression Legal Network and filed by local attorneys Griffin Rubin, Jonathan Bridges and Cash Carter.
Rubin serves as lead counsel and said U.S. universities — outside the case at bar — have been on a trend away from the essence of the First Amendment’s free speech protections.
“I think there is certainly a trend where university administrations — whether through political pressure or donor pressure — are feeling the need to stymie, stifle and stop participants in university life from engaging in full free expression and free speech,” Rubin said.
The facts, explained
On July 31, 2024, during Gutierrez’s time with The Mercury, the then Editor-in-Chief received a Letter to the Editor, or LTTE, from Steinberg. Centered around antisemitism at UTD, the letter focused on Zionism and the present iteration of the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Five days later, Gutierrez issued about two dozen comments that asked Steinberg to add, according to the complaint, “challenges to source credibility and requests for additional sourcing to support factual assertions.”
Despite multiple requests for revisions of factual claims or further editorial remarks, Steinberg rejected such feedback and wished to publish the original LTTE.
In the LTTE’s publication, Gutierrez added the following above Steinberg’s writing:
Disclaimer: The information presented within this letter to the editor is the opinion of the author and should not be treated as news. On June 12, a UN commission found Israel guilty of “crimes against humanity of extermination, gender persecution targeting Palestinian men and boys, murder, forcible transfer, and torture and inhuman and cruel treatment.” The presentation of opinion as fact within this article, despite repeated requests to address the issue, does not meet the journalistic standards of The Mercury.
A day after publishing the LTTE, Steinberg went to the UTD’s Office of Institutional Compliance and filed an incident, claiming the editorial feedback and revisions from Gutierrez were discriminatory in nature. In the months following, Gutierrez and the rest of The Mercury’s staff were fired.
On Sept. 12, 2024, Gutierrez became the first staff member to be removed from The Mercury, triggering a strike by then Mercury staff members who would go on to form The Retrograde. He would not know of any formal investigation against him for over a year.
On Nov. 12, 2025, a UTD administrator’s letter was addressed to Gutierrez stating the violations he had committed in accordance with university rules. This resulted in the original two-year deferred suspension, alongside a requirement to take a course on media ethics and nondiscrimination. His sanction also required the submission of a seven to ten page reflective essay.
The counts
Unlike private spaces, public universities like UTD are considered a state actor and thus must not violate the Constitution.
“Universities are a special place,” Rubin said. “They occupy what the Supreme Court calls ‘a special niche’ in our constitutional tradition, given the amount of freedom of expression and freedom of thought that goes on at college campuses across the country.”
University officials, several of whom Gutierrez is suing, fall under that special niche of constitutional obligation. Named in the case are defendants UTD President Prahbas Moghe, former Vice President of Student Affairs Gene Fitch, Dean of Students Amanda Smith, UT System Chancellor John Zerwas as well as each member of the UT System Board of Regents.
The Retrograde reached out to each of the listed defendants. As of publication, none have responded to requests to comment.
Defendants are alleged to have violated three counts. Each will be considered independently and represents a reason the 25-page case itself has been filed.
The first alleges that, among other issues, that “the inclusion of the disclaimer was protected expression under the First Amendment” and that “UTD punished Gutierrez for that expression, thereby depriving him of constitutional rights.”
The second alleges that defendants “exceeded the permissible limits on regulating a limited public forum by enforcing their policies against Gutierrez.” Mainly concerned with the unique role student newspapers and limited public forums play in educational settings, the count argues that “the disclaimer added through the editorial discretion afforded to an editor of The Mercury became the subject of a UTD investigation based on a perceived viewpoint with which defendants disagreed.”
The third alleges retaliation from university officials Moghe and Fitch, such as the claim that “Gutierrez’s removal and the subsequent investigation into him were pretextual: UTD alleged national-origin discrimination even though Steinberg’s complaint concerned religion.”
The future
Rubin said that a preliminary injunction is the next step, where he will ask a court to temporarily block the university from continuing to sanction Gutierrez before the larger trial can be held.
Regardless of whether that preliminary injunction is successful, Gutierrez will likely pursue a full trial to seek more permanent forms of relief: a clearing of Gutierrez’s disciplinary record, a prohibition of future similar actions, acknowledgements of wrongdoing as well as attorney’s fees.
The larger picture, however, deals with the precedent that the case could set. Filed in a U.S. District Court, it will be federal courts that hear the case. For Rubin, the case is best represented by the underlying values at stake: the free exchange of ideas, speech and expression.
“Cases of this nature represent something bigger than just the client, and Gregorio knows that,” Rubin said. “That’s one of the reasons that he made the difficult decision to have this lawsuit be brought: the exchange of ideas is the crux of what universities are there for.”