Arizona State student suing after being fired over her report on Jacob Blake’s criminal record
Rae’Lee Klein demands to be rehired at Blaze Radio or get monetary damages for violating her First Amendment rights.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}An Arizona State University journalism student is suing after she was fired from the school’s radio station for tweeting about Jacob Blake’s past accusations of sexual assault.
Attorney Jack D. Wilenchik has sent a letter to the public university instructing them to either rehire Rae’Lee Klein, a Cheyenne, Wyoming native, at Blaze Radio or provide monetary damages for violating her First Amendment rights.
“Always more to the story, folks,” said Klein in an August tweet with a New York Post article on the arrest warrant for Blake. “Please read this article to get the background of Jacob Blake’s warrant. You’ll be quite disgusted.”
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}“I was reading through it and I just thought it was super interesting and enlightening and a part of the story we haven’t been told yet,” said Klein.
“I was just trying to do A, what I was assigned to do and B, what I thought was my job as a journalist, which is to share an important part of the story,” said Klein, who was on the politics beat.
In a statement to Fox News about the controversy, ASU said: “Kristin Gilger, Interim Dean, Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication has been clear with Rae’Lee Klein that she would not be, and has not been, removed as station manager of Blaze Radio because of the views she expressed. Ms. Klein remains a student employee of Arizona State University and ASU has presented her with options to continue on as a station manager in a way that takes into account the needs and points of view of other students involved in the Blaze Radio organization. Discussions on this front continue.”
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}The school noted that Blaze Radio is a student club, operated by students and governed by student organization rules.
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A complaint against Blake led to felony charges being filed in July accusing him of sexually assaulting a woman in May. Blake, who was wanted on a warrant for those charges when police arrived at the scene Aug. 23, pleaded not guilty to the charges earlier this month via video from his hospital bed. A trial date was set for Nov. 9.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Cellphone video captured by a bystander and posted online shows cops follow Blake with their guns drawn as he walks around the front of a parked SUV, opens the driver’s side door and lean into the vehicle. Cops opened fire, hitting the Black man seven times and leaving him paralyzed from the waist down, according to his family members and lawyer.
The shooting sparked outrage and led to nights of protests and unrest, including a night in which authorities say an Illinois 17-year-old shot and killed two protesters and wounded a third.