Otherwise lawful government action may nonetheless be unlawful if motivated by retaliation for having engaged in activity protected under the First Amendment…. Therefore, though O’Brien was appropriately subject to discipline for his confrontation of Dr. Torres and Dr. Lopes, he may state a claim under § 1983 if his allegations, taken as true, could plausibly show that the defendants’ actions in disciplining him were substantially motivated by his protected speech or expressive conduct….

O’Brien’s [Complaint] plausibly supports a First Amendment retaliation claim…. O’Brien has alleged facts showing that he engaged in speech and conduct protected by the First Amendment in the months leading up to his May 11 confrontation with Dr. Torres and Dr. Lopes. For example, beginning in fall 2010, O’Brien posted on a website his opposition to the student government president and the school administration. He also made several public records requests to Fresno State….

The [Complaint] alleges that prior to May 11, as a result of O’Brien’s political activities and his criticism of university faculty and administration, Dean Coon “requested that students and other faculty members gather information and complaints to use against” him. At least one student provided complaints and other documents to Coon pursuant to this request. Some of the defendants, as well as other faculty members, sent emails to President Welty, Vice President Oliaro, and Dean Coon, “demanding that [they] do something about [O’Brien].” … In addition, at about the same time, the director of alumni relations sent emails to other administrators, including the university’s communications director, requesting that they “do something” about O’Brien and his website. On May 11 itself, before O’Brien sought to videotape Dr. Torres and Dr. Lopes in their offices, O’Brien overheard Lopes saying that O’Brien was “stalking” the hallway, and Torres saying that the faculty “should post ‘wanted’ signs with pictures of [O’Brien’s] face on them to mock [him] and to serve as a warning to other students and faculty as to what [he] looked like and warn of [his] potential presence.”

The [Complaint] also alleges that at the disciplinary hearing on September 13, O’Brien was not given a full and fair opportunity to present his side of the story. The hearing officer refused to look at, or to allow O’Brien to show, the videotape of his encounters with Dr. Torres and Dr. Lopes even though O’Brien represented that the videotape would contradict Torres’ and Lopes’ accounts of what happened on May 11. Dean Coon made, at most, a half-hearted attempt to locate Detective Manucharyan, who was sitting in the lobby prepared to testify, and who would have testified about the contents of the videotape. And the university refused to allow O’Brien to record the proceedings, or to obtain a copy of the recording that the university made of the proceedings. We do not hold that O’Brien’s due process rights were violated in the hearing; that question is not before us. But we do point out that the university, and several of the defendants, did not facilitate — and indeed impeded — O’Brien in his attempt to document and explain his side of the story.

[Further,] Vice President Oliaro … imposed an additional sanction [beyond that recommended by the hearing officer], putting O’Brien on “disciplinary probation” … for the anticipated duration of his time at the university. The consequence of O’Brien’s probationary status was that, by university rule, he could not be the president or treasurer of the campus branch of Young Americans for Liberty, the political advocacy group that O’Brien himself had founded. Further, and also as a consequence of his probationary status, O’Brien could not hold a position in Fresno State student government. In other words, the sanction added by Oliaro sua sponte, above and beyond the sanction recommended by the hearing officer, took direct aim at O’Brien’s political activities on campus …. [And the Complaint alleges that] in the fall of 2012 university officials deleted posts made by O’Brien on university-managed Facebook pages, permanently blocking him from posting about certain issues, while at the same time allowing posts expressing left-leaning viewpoints to remain….

We hold that a retaliation claim has been stated because the allegations of the [Complaint], if believed, could reasonably support a conclusion that faculty members and administrators at Fresno State not only disagreed with the expressed political views of O’Brien, but also sought to punish and muzzle him in retaliation for his expression of those views.