UVA Dean of Students 'Purposefully Tampered' With Investigations Into Student's Speech, Lawsuit Claims

August 02, 2023 1 min read

Emma Camp
Reason Magazine

Excerpt: In the summer of 2020, Morgan Bettinger was a rising senior at the University of Virginia when a fellow student publicly accused her of telling a group of Black Lives Matter protesters that they would make "good speed bumps."

But a second investigation, this time from the school's civil rights office, ultimately cleared Bettinger of wrongdoing and concluded that there was insufficient evidence that Bettinger ever said that protesters would make "good speed bumps." Now Bettinger has filed a lawsuit, arguing that her speech was not a threat and was facially protected by the First Amendment—and therefore, the University of Virginia, as a public institution, had no grounds to punish her.

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