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The student was suspended for one year following a September 2025 protest during a career fair at the university’s campus center.
The student alleged that the university violated his First Amendment rights by suspending him. Ben Pennington/The Boston Globe
The University of Massachusetts Amherst likely violated a student’s First Amendment rights when it suspended him for organizing an on-campus protest, a Superior Court justice ruled
Junior Kivlighan de Montebello was suspended for one year after a Sept. 29, 2025 protest at the university’s campus center. Last month, he filed a lawsuit against the school alleging it violated his right to free speech.
Montebello, a member of Students for Justice in Palestine, was demonstrating because RTX, formerly Raytheon, was recruiting during a campus career fair. The aerospace and defense contractor manufactures weapons and military technology that the Israeli military has used in Gaza.
Accompanied by about two dozen other protesters, Montebello marched to the campus center and used a bullhorn to lead a call-and-response chant, according to a complaint filed in court. They were confronted by Associate Vice Chancellor Jeffrey Hescock and the university’s Demonstration Response and Safety Team, who prohibited them from making noise or otherwise expressing their message.
The university alleged that Montebello had violated the Code of Student Conduct’s rules on threatening behavior, creating a disturbance, disruptive behavior, failure to comply, and the picketing code, according to the complaint. The school’s disciplinary board found him responsible for all but one of the violations, threatening behavior.
Montebello filed a complaint Jan. 27 in Hampshire Superior Court, asserting that he was punished for constitutionally protected speech that did not disrupt university operations. Justice Jeffrey Trapani ruled Friday that UMass must allow Montebello to return to classes and is banned from dismissing or further sanctioning him while the case continues, court records show.
“After oral argument on February 11, 2026, and review of the parties’ submissions, the court concludes, based on the record presently before the court, that Plaintiff has met the standard for a preliminary injunction with regard to his claim that the suspension violates his right to free speech under the First Amendment and Article 16 (of the Declaration of Rights),” Trapani wrote in a statement obtained by the Boston Herald.
Trapani also granted Montebello’s emergency motion for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction, court records showed. Urszula Masny-Latos, executive director of the National Lawyers Guild-Mass Chapter, called the ruling “a huge victory for student free speech.”
“The court confirmed what we argued from the start: UMass cannot suspend a student for exercising his constitutional right to peaceful protest,” Masny-Latos told the Herald. “Universities that silence dissent should take notice.”
Attorneys representing Montebello and UMass could not immediately be reached for comment Tuesday night.
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