Justices decline to take college free speech case
WASHINGTON − The Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal challenging a so-called “bias-response team” at Virginia Tech, avoiding a roiling debate over campus speech that has pitted First Amendment claims against efforts to foster inclusivity at American colleges.
The court sent the case back to the lower courts to dismiss as moot because Virginia Tech has disbanded the team and said it would not reinstitute it.
Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito said they would have taken the case to address “a high-stakes issue” for U.S. higher education.
“Until we resolve it, there will be a patchwork of First Amendment rights on college campuses,” they wrote. “Students in part of the country may pursue challenges to their universities’ policies, while students in other parts have no recourse and are potentially pressured to avoid controversial speech to escape their universities’ scrutiny and condemnation.”
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said she would have outright denied the challenger’s appeal.
The legal fight reached the top court as the debate over speech on campus has become particularly fraught. School administrators are navigating a push for inclusivity in student bodies that − like the rest of the nation – are often sharply divided over politics, cultural issues and foreign affairs.
Two university presidents have resigned in recent weeks, including Claudine Gay of Harvard, following a congressional hearing in early December in which they were grilled about their handling of student activism on campus related to the Israel-Hamas war.
Virginia Tech created its bias-response team in 2018 to review and confront bias on campus – sexist jokes, say, or racist name-calling. The team met weekly to consider complaints, which were submitted through online forms. One administrator described it as “air traffic control.”
Similar efforts have proliferated at universities across the nation as schools wrestle with high-profile hate incidents. But lawsuits have challenged such efforts on First Amendment grounds. Conservatives say the policies intimidate students from speaking their minds.
A U.S. District Court ruled against Speech First, the group that sued Virginia Tech. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed that decision.
Speech First claimed the bias efforts violated the First Amendment by making students with unpopular views reluctant to express those opinions for fear of being turned over to school administrators for discipline.
Those views, the group told the Supreme Court, included one student who believes that immigrants who cross the border illegally should be referred to as “illegal aliens,” and another who believes the Black Lives Matter movement is “fundamentally racist.”
However, Virginia Tech disbanded its bias-response team and the university’s president, Timothy Sands, signed an affidavit pledging that the university would not reinstitute the policy.
Noting the policy change, the school had sought to dismiss the case as moot, which is what the high court did.