Student Council’s Student Judiciary denied an appeal filed by the Multicultural Student Coalition claiming the student finance board violated viewpoint neutrality when assigning a minimum budget to the organization.

SJ expected MCSC to be dissatisfied with the result of the trial panel in which the judiciary affirmed the Student Services Finance Committee’s decision to minimumally fund the organization, Student Judiciary Chief Nick Checker said in an email to The Badger Herald.

MCSC alleged the trial panel incorrectly interpreted an Associated Students of Madison bylaw stating a procedural violation is a viewpoint neutrality violation.

In this case, SSFC Chair Ellie Bruecker forgot to set the minimum funding level one week before the next budget cycle began.

Checker said this “innocent oversight” was indiscriminate and did not affect the SSFC’s evaluation for the minimum funding criteria. He added no evidence was provided to suggest otherwise.

ASM bylaws give several criteria for appeals and the appeal filed by MCSC did not provide sufficient grounds, Checker said.

Checker said MCSC alleges the panel should consider all procedural violations to be viewpoint neutrality violations. He also said while a procedural violation can be evidence of a VPN violation, they are not necessarily the case.

“Quite literally, to be VPN is to not take a group’s viewpoint into consideration during budgeting or eligibility processes,” Checker said.

Checker said no evidence was offered to the trial panel or the judiciary suggesting any SSFC member took MCSC’s viewpoint into consideration during the 2013-14 budget presentation.

MCSC, Checker said, needed to have established some kind of procedural or legal error on the part of the trial panel.

“The legal error would be misinterpreting [Board of Regents of University of Wisconsin System v. Southworth], other federal precedent or ASM bylaws, none of which occurred,” Checker said.

He went on to say MCSC could introduce a bylaw or something that could be interpreted differently that the trial failed to realize. He also said MCSC reserves the right to appeal this decision to Interim Chancellor David Ward.

MSCS representatives Niko Magallon and Libby Wick-Bander did not respond for comment.