“This petition raises a critical issue for our nation's higher education system. Until we resolve this issue, our campuses will be covered with First Amendment rights patches. Work will remain,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in dissent. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. was also present.
The lawsuit is one of nine filed by Speech First, an advocacy group that challenges universities' biased reporting policies, on behalf of conservative students who say they are being silenced. be. Several other influential right-wing organizations also supported the challenge, including the powerful Christian law group the Alliance Defending Freedom.
Virginia Tech's Bias Intervention and Response Team was created in 2018 by then-Dean of Students. In a court filing, he said he wants to make the reporting process simpler, more efficient and easier to track. “BIRT serves as a kind of 'air traffic control' for bias-related complaints,” he wrote in 2021. Posters on campus encouraged students to “report it…if you hear or see something like an incident of bias, say something or express something.”
The team had no authority to discipline students accused of bias or even require them to discuss the incident with school officials. Allegations of criminal activity can be referred to police, and allegations of violations of school rules can be referred to appropriate administrators, but they do not have the same authority as individuals on campus. Administrators said complaints involving protected speech were not pursued by the office. But despite this policy, Speech First fears that students will express conservative views such as support for Donald Trump and opposition to affirmative action, illegal immigration, same-sex marriage, and transgender rights. He claimed that there was.
Speech First provided no evidence that anyone was disciplined or threatened with discipline by the bias team. The group highlighted complaints of bias it deemed unfair, including allegations of sex discrimination over some boys' dismissal of girls' athletic abilities during a snowball fight, but court records show no complaints about those reports. There was no evidence that the school took any action. .
For these reasons, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit concluded last year that Speech First did not have standing to challenge the policy.
The Fourth Circuit majority, made up of Democratic appointees, wrote that “the First Amendment does not preclude modest efforts to encourage civility on college campuses.” “Just as universities legitimately strive to promote intellectual curiosity, they may legitimately strive to promote civility and a sense of belonging among their student populations. In a dissenting opinion, the court's Republican appointees argued that even if the bias system created no discipline or obligation, it created “uncertainty” and “encourages students to remain silent instead of speaking out.” There is a possibility that it will be lost,'' he said.
After losing at the district court level, Speech First challenged the university's anti-discrimination policies in three other appellate courts, challenging the trial and requiring a single judge to consider the evidence and oversee the trial. succeeded in. The 4th Circuit majority said these courts “appear to ignore the factual findings” of district court judges who found that there was no concrete evidence, and that speech was being chilled. Ta. One of the appeals courts, the Chicago-based 7th Circuit, ruled against the group, saying the lawsuit was based on “speculation.” However, the University of Illinois settled the case before appealing to the Supreme Court, including by asserting that the bias team “does not have the authority to impose any form of discipline on students.” Several other schools changed policies or disbanded bias reporting agencies in the wake of the lawsuit.
Brian Sausek, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, said universities have to deal with competing legal obligations between students' right to free speech and their right to be protected from racially or sexually hostile campus environments. He said there was a “difficult line” to walk when it came to finding that balance. He said, “I think the bias reporting team is a way to overcome that dilemma and resolve the case without regret.''
He said it's difficult to tell whether it's working because none of the lawsuits involve pending intervention by the bias reporting team. Instead, he said, anonymous students fear such actions.
“There has never been any actual disciplinary action taken in any of these cases,” Soucek said. Instead he said: “The justices are simply making up for this lack of fact with their own opinions about the current state of free speech on campus. We're making these decisions based on that.”
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, one of the Supreme Court's liberal members, dissented, and the court declared the ruling invalid because the challengers had not made a convincing case. Instead, he said, he should have denied the Fourth Circuit's motion to reconsider the decision. A change in policy.
Sherise Trump, executive director of Speech First, said in a statement that although the Supreme Court did not hear the case, she acknowledged that they took credit for ending Virginia Tech's biased reporting policies. The group said it was “disappointed.” “The fight for free speech on campus is bigger than ever, and we will continue to protect students’ free speech rights across the country,” she added.
A Virginia Tech spokesperson declined to comment.
