University coffee shop owner gets staggering free speech settlement after thin blue line sticker lead to campus 'firestorm'

A college in Idaho owes a local coffee shop owner $4 million after a jury agreed she lost her contract following a conflict over her public support of law enforcement.

Sarah Fendley was awarded $3 million for lost business, reputational damage, mental and emotional distress and personal humiliation on September 13, and another $1 million in punitive damages from a specific school staffer.

The money will come from Boise State University, after a jury discerned the school  trampled on the Big City Coffee owner's First Amendment rights.

She had originally sued for $10 million, after thin-blue line stickers she posted outside the on-campus location fueled backlash from the student body. This, lawyers said, came during protests organized in response to the murder of George Floyd. 

Forced to close within a year, Fendley later claimed the school terminated her contract because of her support for police - an assertion jurors agreed with.

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'I have gratitude to the jury of 12 peers that unanimously came back with the verdict in my favor,' Fendley, who cried as the verdict was read, told KTVB in a statement.  

'I am grateful they committed three weeks of their lives to hearing my case. 

'It's been almost four years since I was removed from Boise State campus and my attorney, Mike Roe said it best in closing arguments to the jury, "This case is not about liberal vs. conservative, Black vs. white, gay vs. straight."'

'It's not even about anti-police vs. pro police,' she continued. 

'It's about highly educated, highly compensated, government officials running Idaho's largest university grossly mistreating a small businesswoman because they didn't care about her and doing so was easier than doing the right thing. 

'In that mistreatment,' she said, 'they violated [my] First Amendment rights to free speech and free expression.'

In a statement also sent to KTVB, Keely Duke, the attorney represented the school, said: 'We respectfully but strongly disagree with today's verdict and plan to appeal. We were honoring the First Amendment rights of all involved.'

Duke, meanwhile, also represented two BSU administrators - ex-vice president for student affairs and enrollment management Leslie Webb and chief financial and operating officer and vice president for finance and operations Alicia Estey.

The latter took the stand Friday as the last witness after hastily calling a meeting with Fendley back in 2020 to warn her about the social media 'firestorm' her post had created, the business owner's suit. 

Estey also secretly recorded much of the meeting, and hours before it started, she and other administrators had been drafting a press release about the business leaving campus, Fendley's attorney said.

This, he argued, made it clear she and Webb had a single outcome in mind - caving into the demands of outraged student activists.

Estey on Friday shot back: 'We didn't retaliate against her at all.

'She made a choice to leave which was her choice to make,' she continued. 'There was no retaliation.' 

Big City’s campus shop would go on to close four days after the meeting, after student activists chided Fendley and her store online.

'I hope y’all don’t go there if you truly support your bipoc peers and other students, staff and faculty,' one student posted on Snapchat at the time, using an acronym that refers to black and Indigenous people, as well as people of color. 

Fendley, who had been engaged to a former Boise police officer who had been paralyzed in a gunfight at the time, responded to it with her own public Facebook and Instagram posts, in which she doubled down on her support for police.

Shortly after, her contract with the school was terminated - spurring her to file the now resolved lawsuit.

Jurors awarded her an additional $1 million in punitive damages from Webb, who argued it was her job to hear students out as the school's former vice president of student affairs. 

She now works as an administrator at the University of Montana.

As of writing, it remains unclear if the university, insurance, or Webb and Estey themselves in their personal capacity will pay the damages.