OAKLAND — The Peralta Community College district is considering guidelines to limit where and how groups can speak on campus, prompting outrage from employees and students who say the proposed rules would restrict free speech.

“This is an abomination,” said Robert Bezemek, an attorney for the Peralta Federation of Teachers, which has threatened to sue if the policy is adopted. “This is a (policy) Martin Luther King would have violated the moment he spoke. For 270 years, the colleges of this country have been free-speech zones.”

Peralta is only the latest district to consider the so-called free-speech zones, which have riled academics around the country.

The Peralta guidelines are the result of a dispute with an anti-abortion group that has visited several East Bay colleges in the past two years, the district’s attorney, Thuy Nguyen, told a small group of students, professors and other employees at Oakland’s Laney College on Wednesday.

Some reacted angrily to Nguyen’s explanation.

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