Miami college administrators urged a Florida federal court to dismiss a lawsuit filed by students who said they were unjustly disciplined for protesting against a U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement contract, saying immunity bars the complaint against them. 

Florida International University administrators Amelia Rodriguez, Devin Parra and Phillip Lloyd filed a motion to dismiss Tuesday, arguing that the lawsuit alleging First Amendment violations should be dismissed due to qualified immunity. The suit was filed by seven students and ICEBreakers, a student-led coalition formed in August 2025 to protest FIU's partnership with ICE.

In their suit, filed in mid-August, the students said they were punished for violating FIU's Regulation 110(3), which restricts indoor protest activities, after they protested against an agreement between the school and ICE that deputizes campus police and allows them to make immigration-related arrests. The agreement, known as a 287(g) agreement, gives state and local law enforcement authority to make such arrests.

A federal court issued a preliminary injunction against Regulation 110(3) in late August after finding it might be unconstitutional.

The administrators told the court Tuesday that qualified immunity "is the rule, not the exception" in lawsuits seeking damages for alleged constitutional violations.

"Public officials are protected unless their conduct violated a constitutional right that was clearly established at the time of the alleged violation," the administrators said in their motion. "But plaintiffs sued these FIU administrators for simply applying the plain text of FIU's Regulation 110(3), which is facially neutral and had not been declared unconstitutional at the time of the protests at issue."

The plaintiffs said they protested FIU's 287(g) contract during a March 13 speaker event featuring FIU President Jeanette Nuñez and retired Major League Baseball player Alex Rodriguez inside a college auditorium.

During the event, the students wore T-shirts that said "ICE OFF FIU" and stood up to face the crowd. According to the plaintiffs, the silent protest lasted about two minutes before they walked and wasn't disruptive.

The university ultimately determined that the students violated FIU Regulation 110(3), and required them to complete a short video explaining their understanding of protest policies before they could enroll in classes.

The students alleged that the regulation is unconstitutional, citing the U.S. Supreme Court's 1969 decision in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District. In that ruling, the justices held there was no evidence that students who wore black armbands to peacefully protest the Vietnam War "materially disrupt[ed] classwork or involve[ed] substantial disorder or invasion of the rights of others."

The students alleged that Regulation 110(3) is overbroad and goes beyond what's allowed under Tinker.  

But the administrators said Tuesday that the Tinker decision still allows colleges to place "reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions" on protests, claiming the specifics of such restrictions remain unsettled and that they weren't aware the regulation could be unlawful. 

The three defendants argued they're entitled to qualified immunity because they were following what appeared to be "facially neutral" protest regulation and that no "reasonable university administrator in their position would have known they were violating a clearly established constitutional right at the time." 

Rodriguez works in FIU's Office of Student Conduct and Academic Integrity and informed the students they violated university regulations, while Parra oversaw the hearing in which the students were found responsible for failing to comply with the protest rule and required them to complete the short videos. Hamilton is the FIU employee who upheld the students' discipline on appeal.

All three defendants said they were acting under the discretionary authority allowed in their roles as administrators when the students' discipline cases came before them. In addition, the defendants said the students haven't shown violations of a "clearly established" right. 

"Even assessing the individual defendants' actions under the Tinker framework, plaintiffs cannot show that this application is clearly established to be unconstitutional under Tinker," the administrators said.

They added that "there is no allegation that the individual defendants acted based on some disagreement with the views that plaintiffs expressed." 

Adam Saper of the Community Justice Project, who represents the plaintiffs, told Law360 in an email Wednesday that the administrators' immunity claims are "baseless" and that the presiding judge already determined FIU's indoor protest regulation is potentially unconstitutional.

"The only remaining question is whether that constitutional right was clearly established," Saper said. "It was. As the order preventing FIU from further pursuing the discipline notes, the right has been established by over [60] years of First Amendment precedent. There is no immunity for ignoring such well-established legal principles in the attempt to silence student voices."

Counsel for defendants didn't immediately respond to emailed requests for comment on Wednesday. 

The plaintiffs are represented by Nicholas L.V. Warren, Caroline A. McNamara, Michelle Morton, Amy Godshall and Daniel B. Tilley of the ACLU Foundation of Florida; Adam C. Saper, Miriam F. Haskell and Alana Greer of the Community Justice Project; James Slater of Slater Legal PLLC; and Reid Levin of Reid Levin PLLC. 

The defendants are represented by Mohammad O. Jazil of Holtzman Vogel Baran Torchinsky & Josefiak PLLC. 

The case is ICEBreakers et al. v. Nunez et al., case number 1:26-cv-25395, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. 

--Editing by Abbie Sarfo.

Update: This story has been updated to include a response from the plaintiffs' counsel. 

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