Lane Community College in Oregon blocked Richard Riordan from enrolling until December 31, 2099. His offense: posting a meme of Lord Farquaad from Shrek to criticize the college board's budget decisions. The enrollment hold meant Riordan — a real student, trying to take real classes — was effectively expelled for the next seventy-three years over a Shrek joke.
U.S. District Judge Michael McShane ended that on September 28.
McShane issued a preliminary injunction ordering the college to remove the trespass notice against Riordan and lift the enrollment hold, allowing him to register for classes that started the same day as the ruling. The judge's opinion didn't mince around the edges. He wrote that Riordan's speech was "at times annoying, long-winded, aggressive, hyperbolic, and grandiose" — and then noted that the college's portrayal of Riordan as a serious threat was "equally hyperbolic."
The core of the dispute traces back to a series of board meetings earlier this year. Riordan — whose father, Rick Riordan, is a faculty member at LCC — had been a vocal critic of the board's budget decisions. On May 18, he sent a letter to the board titled "Cuts for Thee but Not For Me," challenging how the college was allocating resources. He attended the May 5 board meeting and a June 3 budget meeting, using his allotted three minutes of public comment time to make his case.
This is the meme he Riordan sent to members of the board that got his banned for life
The college's response was to build a "crime report" spanning April 15 through June 17 — created on June 18 — and use it to justify banning Riordan from campus entirely. The meme that apparently pushed administrators over the edge featured Lord Farquaad, the diminutive villain from the 2001 DreamWorks film, a character whose image has been a common internet joke since at least 2014. Riordan used it to mock the board. The board treated it like a credible threat.
Judge McShane's ruling centered on the First Amendment. "Angry speech is still protected speech," he wrote. That sentence carries the weight of the entire case. A student was irritating. A student was loud. A student posted a meme from a children's movie. None of that crosses the line into unprotected speech, and the college knew it — which is why their justification leaned on vague safety concerns rather than any specific, credible threat.
Kevin Brague, Riordan's attorney, called the ruling a "vindication of a student's ability to freely speak on campus." McShane did uphold a temporary restriction on Riordan approaching trustees directly or attending board meetings, but the enrollment block and trespass order — the actual punishment — were struck down.
LCC Senior Advisor for Strategic Communications Jenna McCulley, Director of Student Life Becca Maley, and Director of Public Safety Lisa Rupp were all involved in the process that led to the ban. An entire administrative apparatus mobilized against one student with a meme account and strong opinions about the budget.
The pattern is familiar. A student says something administrators don't like. The institution reaches for the heaviest hammer it can find — not because the speech is dangerous, but because the speech is effective. Riordan wasn't threatening anyone. He was embarrassing the board. And embarrassment, at a public college, is not a crime.
Riordan started classes on September 28. The enrollment hold that was supposed to last until 2099 lasted about four months.