Once again, college administrators have demonstrated that they don't think the First Amendment applies to the campus:

Two students who were threatened with suspension at the College of Alameda after one of them prayed with an ailing teacher in a faculty office can sue the community college district for allegedly violating their freedom of speech, a federal judge has ruled.

The students, Kandy Kyriacou and Ojoma Omaga, said college officials at first told them they were being suspended for "disruptive behavior," then held disciplinary hearings and sent them letters warning that they would be punished if they prayed in a teacher's office again.

The women sued, and U.S. District Judge Susan Illston ruled in San Francisco that their case could proceed, saying a college student has the right to pray in private outside the classroom.

Although a public college, like other government agencies, must refrain from endorsing religion, Illston said in her March 31 ruling that an objective observer probably wouldn't have thought that the Alameda community college was making any such endorsement just because the teacher bowed her head while the student was praying.

The article focuses on the freedom of speech issue, but the freedom of religion issue is equally implicated in the case.

It's one thing for some ignorant community college professor to walk up to a couple of people praying and say "You can't be doing that in here." It's another for college administrators and lawyers take it to the point where they suspend the students and open the taxpayers up to a lawsuit that they're (hopefully) going to lose.