A Boise coffee shop owner’s lawsuit against Boise State University has finally made it to trial in an Ada County courtroom.
Big City Coffee owner Sarah Fendley sued Boise State in 2021 for $10 million after her campus shop closed just a month or so after opening the year before. The case revolves around a contentious meeting between Fendley and administrators in 2020 that ultimately ended with Big City Coffee shuttering its campus location after 42 days in business.
Fendley’s attorney, Michael Roe, said Thursday during opening statements in court that Fendley was forced off of campus to appease a group of students who disagreed with her pro-police views and support for the thin blue line.
“My client was sacrificed,” Roe said.
Boise State’s attorney, Keely Duke, said that it was Fendley who chose to terminate the campus contract after administrators remained neutral in the dispute.
“We are all here because Fendley demanded special treatment, and she was told no by Alicia Estey and Leslie Webb,” Duke said. “They cannot weaponize the student code of conduct to punish students for expressing opinions you do not like.”
The case has honed in on two individual defendants — Estey, who was Boise State’s vice president for university affairs at the time and has since been promoted to chief financial and operating officer; and Webb, the university’s former vice president of student affairs.
The conflict stems from a post Fendley made on social media Oct. 21, 2020, after she was emailed a screenshot of a Boise State student’s private Snapchat story. The student criticized Big City Coffee’s support of the thin blue line. Fendley addressed the screenshot in her own public Facebook and Instagram posts.
Fendley has been vocal about her support for police online and in her downtown shop, which displays a 3-by-5-inch thin blue line flag near the door.
The thin blue line — a movement to support police — is embodied by a black-and-white American flag with one horizontal blue stripe. The flags rose in popularity at a time when the U.S. saw growing calls for police reform in the wake of George Floyd’s death in May 2020. Floyd, a Black man, was killed by former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, a white man. His last words, “I can’t breathe,” which were captured on video, sparked a wave of Black Lives Matter protests that rocked the country for months and raised discussions about police brutality and issues of race.
In court, in response to a question from her attorney, Fendley said she wouldn’t support the thin blue line if she thought it was racist. She added that she voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020.
Still, Fendley said she’s been a longtime supporter of law enforcement.
In court, she said that as a young girl in the small town of New Plymouth, Idaho, she had an abusive father. She recalled him giving her mother a black eye when she was in kindergarten. She turned to the police, and the help she received from two officers went on to shape her relationship with law enforcement.
Perhaps even more influential, she alluded, was her relationship with her former fiance, Kevin Holtry. As a Boise Police Department officer, Holtry became paralyzed from the waist down in 2016 after a gunfight with a fugitive on the Boise Bench. Holtry’s partner, Brian Holland, killed the fugitive, the Idaho Statesman reported. Holtry, who is no longer with the Police Department, is listed as a witness in the lawsuit.
Fendley and Holtry both attended Boise State.
Social media post spurs lawsuit
On Snapchat, the student said that while they originally supporting having a local business in the space on campus that was previously occupied by Starbucks, they no longer support Big City Coffee after discovering that the business supports the thin blue line.
The student encouraged others not to patronize the shop if they “truly support and love” their BIPOC peers. BIPOC stands for Black, Indigenous and people of color.
“I remember feeling defeated,” Fendley testified on Thursday. “I said, ‘OK, I’m going to address it.’ I always address these things when they come up.”
In her post, Fendley shared details about the shooting that left Holtry paralyzed. She even attached a photo of him.
The post came up the following morning, on Oct. 22, 2020, in a class Boise State President Marlene Tromp was teaching. While Fendley had cropped the screenshot to not include the student’s name, Duke said some students were concerned about possible doxxing, which refers to when a person’s identifying information, such as an address, phone number or name, is maliciously posted online, according to dictionary.com.
“They were upset that this is how a business owner would respond to a single Snapchat with a group of students,” Duke said.
A couple of hours after the class, a student lodged a complaint with the university, Duke said.
Fendley said her point of contact at the university, Nicole Nimmons, who is not named in the lawsuit, called to inform her that the post had created a “firestorm.”
“This firestorm increased pressure on the defendants to remove Big City Coffee from campus,” Roe said.
Fendley was called into a hasty meeting with university administrators that her attorney said was a “critical” event in the case. Nimmons was not allowed in the meeting, according to Fendley.
Owner says university ended contract
Attorneys on both sides shared opposing views Thursday of what occurred during the meeting, most of which was secretly recorded by Estey. But the recording was inadvertently stopped before the meeting was over. The last 20 minutes or so, which Roe claims
Seven people attended, including Fendley, Holtry, Estey, Webb and Brian Holzworth, a representative for Aramark, a food vendor on campus.
Duke said the university administrators set up the meeting “to discuss the difficulties they were navigating and how to work together.” Duke said Fendley assumed Boise State would use the student code of conduct to suppress the students who disagreed with her. Fendley, on the other hand, said she didn’t ask for the student to be disciplined. She said she wanted the university’s support.
During during the meeting, Webb told Fendley “that’s not going to happen,” according to Roe. He also alleged that in the days following the meeting, Boise State administrators twice asked Fendley to join a statement saying the departure was mutual. Fendley declined both times, he said.
The shop closed just four days later on Oct. 26, 2020.
Roe and Fendley said the university terminated Fendley’s contract because of her support for police. Roe said the removal was a violation of her First Amendment right to free speech.
Duke said the university never told Fendley to stop supporting the thin blue line or to delete her post.
She also said administrators were aware of Fendley’s support for the thin blue line and the potential problems it could cause on campus before agreeing to the contract, and that it didn’t deter them. Likewise, Duke said Fendley “chose to come to campus knowing that the belief she has would be a problem for some people.”
“Freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom from consequences,” Duke said. “The First Amendment protects everyone. It protects Fendley’s right to express her support for the thin blue line. It also supports, though, anyone’s right to not support Big City Coffee.”
Roe said Fendley took out a $125,000 loan to invest in supplies and equipment for the campus location — costs she was unable to recoup. He said the university’s actions also damaged her reputation and personal relationships.
Initial counts in the lawsuit against the university and administrators in their official capacities were previously dismissed, because the 11th Amendment bars suits against the state, which the university and the officials represented. Other counts related to the Idaho Constitution, Idaho law or contractual issues were also dismissed. But much of the lawsuit was allowed to proceed.
The jury trial is expected to last nine days over the course of three weeks. District Judge Cynthia Yee-Wallace is presiding over the case.
Jury selection weeds out pro-police, anti-police sentiments
Yee-Wallace trimmed down a pool of less than 100 potential jurors during a jury selection process Wednesday, where Roe questioned the pool about what bumper stickers they had on their cars, what flags they fly in front of their homes and what yards signs they might have out front. There was also a show of hands for anyone who owns a small business or is in the military.
During that process, Duke asked the jurors whether they thought Black Lives Matter and the thin blue line were equal concepts. She drew upon the social and political climate of the summer of 2020, when Fendley was approached about opening a new shop at Boise State.
“What was going on in that time? Other than, of course, Covid,” she said. “We had George Floyd. We had protests. We had Black Lives Matter. Those are the types of social issues at issue in this case.”
Juror No. 43 said they didn’t think the case would be a good fit for them.
“If I saw her coffee shop with the blue lives matter sticker in the window, I would walk away from it,” the juror said. “I’ve supported Black Lives Matter in the past, both as just helping out and also financially. I don’t think this is something where I could walk into it without being biased.”
Yee-Wallace thanked the juror for being honest and excused them from the jury pool.
Another person in the jury pool said her father was a Boise police officer and that she had a thin blue line bumper sticker. She didn’t make it onto the jury, either.
‘Surrounded’ by downtown construction, this Boise restaurant surrendered, closed for now
A big change may be coming near Push & Pour and The STIL on the Boise Bench
‘This project could have died’: Boise gives its blessing to planned Catholic Diocese office
EMEA Tribune is not involved in this news article, it is taken from our partners and or from the News Agencies. Copyright and Credit go to the News Agencies, email news@emeatribune.com Follow our WhatsApp verified Channel
