In 1998, when bugging devices were discovered at City College, one of them a camera hidden in a smoke detector, students were aroused and quickly summoned attorney Ron McGuire to voice their complaint. This issue represented just one of many McGuire handled during nearly 20 years as an attorney for students at CUNY, often pro bono.

A much longer case was one at the College of Staten Island, where he devoted more than 18 years, at his own expense, fighting for student-journalists against the CUNY administration for their right to publish independent editorial positions in their publications.

“We won this case before the U.S. Court of Appeals,” McGuire said during a recent interview. “But I was denied full attorney’s fees for the case. Instead they slashed it by 95 percent, which left me destitute.”

At the core of this issue, McGuire said, “is whether or not the federal courthouse doors will be slammed shut to CUNY students’ constitutional law claims.”

He continued, “Clearly, I want to get paid, but if my fee gets cut by 95 percent on a case where I worked for 19 years, no other private attorney is going to be in a position to take up similar cases for CUNY students.

“The U.S. Supreme Court in 1995 said that vital First Amendment speech principles are at stake in preserving the right of student newspapers at public colleges to publish without viewpoint-based discrimination. The plaintiff in that case was a white evangelical Christian student. This case in 1997 was based upon the motion that the same First Amendment rights principles applied to CUNY students.”

In 2007, a two-judge majority decided in favor of the plaintiffs. The dissenting judge in the case said it was “a case about nothing.” And this viewpoint, McGuire charged, “was the fundamental issue.” In other words, CUNY students’ rights cannot be treated as less than the rights of other students.

This fight, in essence, is McGuire’s career in a nutshell. He has gone to the mat time and time again for students at CUNY, and the payoff for the 67-year-old lawyer was to have his fees cut by 95 percent. His commitment to the students grows out of his own activist years at the college, when he was part of the strike in 1969 that shutdown the college. For his participation he was expelled.

In 1991, when the students again demonstrated against tuition increases, McGuire stepped in to represent them, believing it would be just a brief interlude. It turned into a 25-year commitment. A coalition of 154 current and former students, faculty and community members have joined the case as amicus curiae to support the petition by eight plaintiffs to have all 13 judges of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals convene in a special session to reconsider the 95 percent cut. Although they want to get McGuire the pay he justly deserves, they are also concerned about the chilling effect this cut will have on other lawyers, who will decline to represent CUNY students in future civil rights cases.

The lawyers may not be inclined to represent the students or even to stand up for McGuire, but in Dr. Leonard Jeffries, he has a loyal and devoted friend. “Ron is a special spirit,” Jeffries, widely known as Dr. J., said in a recent phone interview, adding that McGuire was a student in his class on Black Studies. “Ever since we first met in the late sixties, when the students went on strike at City College, Ron has been like part of my extended family. He is totally committed to the students there in the same way he defended me in my struggles.” Dr. Jeffries said he was proud to stand with the throng of supporters rallying for McGuire recently on the steps of City Hall.

A number of notable activists and civil servants have expressed support for McGuire, including attorneys Michael Tarif Warren and Roger Warham.

Asked of his expectations about the case now in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, McGuire said, “Normally, I would expect a decision in the next few weeks whether or not the court is going to accept the petition. If they accept the petition, then there may be further proceedings, a possible hearing.”