Campus Protests and Free Expression

Wherefore art thou, Romeo? South Carolina’s new, one-size-fits-all library regulations will restrict access to the classics
John Coleman
FIRE

Excerpt: Yesterday, the South Carolina State Board of Education imposed new regulations requiring the removal of all books that include any description of “sexual conduct” from every public school library in the state. This means that classic literary works like “Romeo and Juliet,” “The Canterbury Tales,” and “Ulysses” could be taken off the shelves, raising First Amendment concerns.

Blanket bans like this one in South Carolina impose one-size-fits-all, top-down mandates that require school district administrators to review library books without analyzing whether the specific content is suitable for specific age groups and grade levels.

Adam Liptak
New York Times

Excerpt: The Supreme Court handed the Biden administration a major practical victory on Wednesday, rejecting a Republican challenge that sought to prevent the government from contacting social media platforms to combat what it said was misinformation.

The court ruled that the states and users who had challenged those interactions had not suffered the sort of direct injury that gave them standing to sue.

FIRE

Excerpt: A new poll finds that Americans disapprove of some of the methods employed by the recent pro-Palestinian campus protesters, with large majorities saying they oppose vandalism, oppose building occupations, and support punishing students who participated in encampments.

As part of an AmeriSpeak panel conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression asked Americans in May about their feelings on the series of high-profile protests on college campuses that made headlines across the country.

Katherine Knott
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: The Biden administration’s new rule overhauling Title IX, the federal gender-equity law, is on hold in Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia after a federal judge issued an order temporarily blocking the regulations from taking effect in those states Aug. 1.

Chief Judge Danny Reeves of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky, found that the final regulations, which clarify that Title IX prohibits discrimination based on sexual and gender identity, are inconsistent with the underlying Title IX statute, Congress’s intentions in passing the law, and the way it’s been regulated.

Piper Hutchinson
Louisiana Illuminator

Excerpt: Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry has enacted a law to exclude acts of civil disobedience from free speech protections on college campuses.  

Senate Bill 294 by Sen. Valarie Hodges, R-Denham Springs, was billed as a pro-free speech proposal. The bill was designed to “shore up protections” for campus speech, Hodges said.

Students and faculty opposed the bill because they fear it will criminalize free speech. The new law specifically excludes any act that carries a criminal penalty from free speech protections, meaning campus free speech policies would no longer protect acts of civil disobedience.

Haley Strack
National Review

Excerpt: The University of Michigan and the City University of New York (CUNY) failed to properly assess whether anti-Israel campus protests made for hostile environments for students, faculty, and staff, the Department of Education said on Monday.

“OCR found no evidence that the university complied with its Title VI requirements to assess whether incidents individually or cumulatively created a hostile environment for students, faculty, or staff, and if so, to take steps reasonably calculated to end the hostile environment, remedy its effects, and prevent its recurrence,” the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR), which investigated 75 complaints against the University of Michigan and nine against CUNY, said.