NEW YORK — City College students and alumni have filed a lawsuit against the school, claiming their First Amendment rights were violated when a sign naming a student center after a fugitive terrorist and a militant was removed.

The sign naming Guillermo Morales, a Puerto Rican separatist involved in a series of bombings in the city in the 1970s, and Assata Shakur, who escaped from prison while serving time for the 1973 killing of a New Jersey State Police trooper, was on the door of the center on the school's Harlem campus for 17 years.

Radical student groups picked the name of Guillermo Morales/Assata Shakur Student and Community Center after they began using the space following 1989 sit-ins over tuition increases, and the name stuck without interference from college administrators until recently, when the Daily News published a front-page article calling the name "a punch to the gut" to crime and terror victims.

Then, City University of New York Chancellor Matthew Goldstein wrote to City College President Gregory H. Williams requesting that the "unauthorized and inappropriate" sign over the center's door be taken down. Only CUNY's trustees, Goldstein said, have the authority to name college facilities.

In December, school officials said the sign would be removed.

The lawsuit, filed Jan. 8 in U.S. District Court in New York, claims the school confiscated photos of Shakur and Morales, threatened disciplinary action against the students, tried to evict groups at the center and deliberately disrupted activities at the center by imposing a limit of 20 people there.

The center's director, architecture student Rodolfo Leyton, is among the plaintiffs involved in the case. He has said he believes the groups that use the center should honor the wishes of the activists who chose the name.

The lawsuit seeks a temporary injunction prohibiting the school from taking action against anyone who replaces the sign or evicting some of the groups that use the community center.

A telephone call to the college was not returned in time for this story.

Morales was arrested on bomb-making charges in 1978 after he accidentally blew off all but one finger while handling explosives in a Queens apartment. He was making weapons for the Armed Forces of National Liberation, a group responsible for dozens of bomb attacks.

Morales escaped from custody in 1979 by climbing out a hospital window. He later was jailed in Mexico for five years and now lives in Cuba.

Shakur, whose birth name was Joanne Chesimard, was convicted of murder in 1973 after a traffic stop of a group of armed militants on the New Jersey Turnpike escalated into a shootout.

Trooper Werner Foerster was killed. Another trooper was wounded. Shakur was shot twice, and one of her companions was slain.

Shakur broke out of a New Jersey prison with the help of armed accomplices in 1979 and also fled to Cuba. The U.S. government has offered a $1 million reward for her capture.