Dem-Controlled Senate Panel Kills Bill Aiming To Ban Student Groups Who Support ‘Terrorist Activities’

A Democrat-controlled panel in the Virginia Senate struck down a bill aimed at quelling student organizations that support “terrorist activities.”

Legislators killed the GOP-backed bill Monday after speakers raised concerns about free speech for students supporting Palestinians, though a companion bill is in the Virginia House, the Virginia Mercury reported. The Virginia legislation, focused on campus activism, reflects a broader policy push by conservatives and members of Congress to quell the radical anti-Israel movement.

“I think what we’re trying to do is make sure that our learning environments are places to learn and not to have fear be a part of that,” Republican State Sen. Bill Stanley, who introduced the bill, said in the local paper. “It does not shut down discourse or dialogue.”

Stanley’s Senate Bill 1284 bans access to public college campuses for terrorist groups, those providing “funds or other material support or resources” to such groups and those who “support” them or “attempts to solicit” others to support them.

Stanley did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Democratic State Sen. Mamie Locke, who chairs the Virginia Senate’s Higher Education Subcommittee, did not immediately respond to an inquiry about how each subcommittee member voted on the bill. Three Democrats and two Republicans sit on the panel.

Virginia saw multiple incidents related to anti-Israel student activists last spring, including an encampment at the University of Virginia that police cleared out