Justice Clarence Thomas wrote Monday that the Supreme Court should not let “confusion persist” regarding students’ free speech rights on university campuses.
The Supreme Court declined Monday to hear a case questioning whether “bias response teams” on university campuses chill students’ free speech rights, though Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito would have taken the case.
Over 450 colleges and universities nationwide have “bias response teams” that encourage students to report incidents of bias committed by their peers to school officials, Thomas noted in a dissent.
“Given the number of schools with bias response teams, this Court eventually will need to resolve the split over a student’s right to challenge such programs,” Thomas wrote. “The Court’s refusal to intervene now leaves students subject to a ‘patchwork of First Amendment rights,’ with a student’s ability to challenge his university’s bias response policies varying depending on accidents of geography.”
The case, Speech First, Inc. v. Pamela Whitten, challenged a bias response team on Indiana University’s campus.
Speech First’s student members “credibly fear that the expression of their deeply held views” could be targeted under their school’s policy, such as beliefs “that every person is either male or female” or that “the federal government needs to vigorously enforce our immigration law,” according to the lawsuit filed in May.
“This Court hasn’t addressed the free-speech rights of college students since at least 2010,” Speech First’s petition filed with the Supreme Court stated. “Over that time, those rights have not fared well.”
“Bias-response teams are designed to get as close to the constitutional line as possible, so it’s no surprise that they ‘have divided’ the lower courts,” the petition stated.
Thomas also dissented last year when the majority declined to take up another case filed by Speech First challenging Virginia Tech’s bias response team. The Supreme Court tossed a lower court ruling on Virginia Tech’s bias response policy but did not take up the issue.
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