A student organization of student-service-fee-paying students called Viewpoint Neutrality Now! sued the University of Minnesota based on alleged violations of Free Speech Clause viewpoint neutrality requirements. The coveted student office and lounge space at issue in the University of Minnesota's Coffman Memorial Union is an undisputed limited public forum. The University perennially provides annual leases to the space exclusively to nine cultural centers, where each of the nine cultural centers is a university-recognized student group. By doing so, the University effectively excludes all other university-recognized student groups because there are never any vacancies. The questions presented are: (1) Whether the Eighth Circuit, in affirming summary judgment for the university, has inaccurately interpreted this Court's dicta in Perry Educ. Ass'n v. Perry Local Educators' Ass'n, 460 U.S. 37, 48–49 (1983), that a status discrimination claim, as distinguished from a viewpoint discrimination claim, exists to sue the university for violation of First Amendment Free Speech Clause viewpoint neutrality requirements? (2) Whether the fact that only the same nine cultural centers, which are public university-recognized student groups, have occupied a university's limited public forum student fee supported facility for decades, to the exclusion of all other university-recognized student groups, is sufficient evidence of unreasonable discrimination—either status discrimination or viewpoint discrimination.

Whether the Eighth Circuit's interpretation of Perry Educ. Ass'n v. Perry Local Educators' Ass'n mischaracterizes status discrimination claims under the First Amendment Free Speech Clause in a limited public forum context