Michael Roe’s final message to jurors Friday afternoon was simple and direct.

“One side or the other isn’t remembering it correctly,” he said. “Everybody can’t be telling the truth.”

Jurors believed Roe’s client — Sarah Fendley, the owner of the now-closed Big City Coffee. They didn’t believe Boise State University’s top administrators.

It took a jury in Ada County, Boise State’s home blue turf, just three hours to eat dinner, deliberate and decide Fendley deserved a total of $4 million, four years after her acrimonious exit from campus.

Fendley sought $10 million, but nevertheless, Friday night’s verdict delivered the university a resounding rebuke. For an institution as image-conscious as Boise State, getting routed in open court is never a good look. Especially in this case — in which Fendley argued that Boise State pushed her off campus because a handful of students complained about her vocal support of law enforcement.

It’s too early to estimate the political and reputational fallout, but it’s inevitable.

Before trying to forecast the future, it’s important to put the three-week trial and Friday’s verdict into context. The way Boise State lost says a lot about higher ed politics.

Roe didn’t produce the proverbial smoking gun — an email or a recorded remark that clearly showed an intent to shut down Big City’s library location in the fall of 2020, in violation of Fendley’s First Amendment rights. A centerpiece in Roe’s case was Nicole Nimmons, the Boise State administrator who was Fendley’s point person during Big City’s 42 days on campus. Nimmons testified that she didn’t believe Big City left voluntarily, but did not provide concrete proof.

Similarly, Boise State’s defense didn’t prove its central point: that Fendley voluntarily left campus. Fendley was clearly upset about the student backlash over Big City’s pro-law enforcement position — and what she considered a lack of support from Boise State — but none of that proved that Fendley left of her own accord.

Roe had the burden of proof. He had to convince jurors that, by the preponderance of evidence, that it was more likely than not that Boise State violated Fendley’s First Amendment rights.

In his closing arguments, Roe disparaged the student activists who targeted Big City, repeatedly referring to them as “kids.” But he was also quick to say the students had the ear of Boise State’s administrators — more than Fendley ever did.

“On a very basic, human level, I don’t think they care,” he said.

Roe also painted the Boise State brass in as unsympathetic a light as possible.

He hammered President Marlene Tromp and Alicia Estey, then Tromp’s chief of staff, for secretly recording conversations with Fendley. The practice is legal, but in his cross-examination of Estey, Roe called it “rude” and “obnoxious.”

He suggested that Tromp and fellow administrators had erroneously assumed Fendley was closing her shop for good on Oct. 22, 2020. Fendley had said in an email that she was merely closing for the day, in the face of opposition, because she feared for the safety of her student employees.

Roe also highlighted inconsistencies between Estey and the second defendant in the case, Leslie Webb, who was then Boise State’s vice president for student affairs and enrollment management. Estey left a critical, and only partially recorded, Oct. 22, 2020, meeting with Fendley convinced Big City was closed for good. Webb left the same meeting a few minutes early — but unsure of what would happen next.

Roe depicted Boise State leadership as a worst-case composite sketch of higher education administrators. Aloof and elitist, careless and deceitful. Powerful, yet still beholden to a vocal cabal of students.

Ruling against Estey and Webb, the jury awarded Fendley $3 million. The jury also said Webb — a liaison between Boise State administrators and the student activists — was on the hook for an additional $1 million.

Technically, Boise State wasn’t a defendant. Neither was Tromp. But in the end, those distinctions matter only so much.

First off, it’s unclear whether the university or its insurer would end up paying a settlement. (Boise State did not respond Monday to questions on liability.)

Second, while Webb now works for the University of Montana, Estey remains in Boise State’s top administrative echelon, as chief financial and operating officer and vice president for finance and operations.

And third, this verdict still inevitably reflects on Boise State and Tromp. Throughout her five years at the helm, Tromp has faced unblinking scrutiny from critics who say she is leading the state’s largest university down a road to radical social justice policy. Some of those loudest critics serve in the Legislature. Several of them sit on a newly formed House-Senate working group that will study diversity, equity and inclusion issues.

Friday’s verdict is bad optics, and the timing is equally bad.

In a statement Monday, Tromp defended Estey and Webb — and Boise State’s response. She echoed Boise State’s main argument, repeated throughout the trial: Big City made an unreasonable request, when it expected the university to silence calls for a boycott.

“Public employees in Idaho should not be subject to liability for declining to take a political position or for refusing to censor the opinions of others in violation of the First Amendment,” she said. “We will pursue all avenues of appeal to protect freedom of speech.”

The Big City Coffee trial was an imprecise proxy fight over higher education politics.

Fendley is an unlikely human face in this debate. Fendley, who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and President Joe Biden in 2020, is a self-described moderate who doesn’t share the same views as the conservative activists who embraced her cause.

While ideology certainly cast its shadow in the courtroom, District Judge Cynthia Yee-Wallace took some steps to rein in the case before her. She blocked Roe from calling big-spending conservative donor Larry Williams and former Idaho Freedom Foundation staffer Dustin Hurst as witnesses, questioning what their testimony would add to the record. She also banned any questions broaching “the political leanings of Boise State’s administration.”

In one pretrial motion, defense attorney Keely Duke urged Yee-Wallace to keep the Big City case from becoming “a mini-trial on DEI at Boise State.” The trial wasn’t exactly that. Yet Duke still lost.

On Friday night, Duke pledged to appeal. As long as this appeal meets the judiciary’s rules, the Idaho Supreme Court or the Idaho Court of Appeals would hear it.

But that doesn’t change the fact that Boise State has plenty of damage to try to control.

Kevin Richert writes a weekly analysis on education policy and education politics. Look for his stories each Thursday. Due to the timeliness of the topic, this week’s analysis piece was published on Monday, Sept. 15.