Free Speech On Campuses

The first quote provided below is from Professor Eugene Volokh's editorial as published on May 11, 2017 by The Washington Post.

"The Supreme Court has made “crystal clear” that the government may not discriminate based on viewpoint, even in limited public fora such as university open spaces (or for that matter even university programs for funding student speech). Lower courts have consistently struck down campus speech codes aimed at supposedly bigoted speech. See, e.g., Dambrot v. Central Michigan Univ., 55 F.3d 1177, 1184-85 (6th Cir. 1995); DeJohn v. Temple Univ., 537 F.3d 301, 316-17, 320 (3d Cir. 2008); McCauley v. Univ. of V.I., 618 F.3d 232, 237-38, 250 (3d Cir. 2010); Iota Xi Chapter of Sigma Chi Fraternity v. George Mason Univ., 993 F.3d 386, 388-89, 391, 393 (4th Cir. 1993); College Republicans v. Reed, 523 F. Supp. 2d 1005, 1010-11, 1021 (N.D. Cal. 2007); Roberts v. Haragan, 346 F. Supp. 2d 853, 870-72 (N.D. Tex. 2004); Bair v. Shippensburg Univ., 280 F. Supp. 2d 357, 373 (M.D. Pa. 2003); Booher v. Bd. of Regents of N. Ky. Univ., 1998 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 11404, *28-*31 (E.D. Ky. 1998); UWM Post, Inc. v. Regents, 774 F. Supp. 1163, 1165-66, 1173, 1177 (E.D. Wis. 1991); Doe v. Univ. of Mich., 721 F. Supp. 852, 856, 864-66 (E.D. Mich. 1989). And in Christian Legal Society v. Martinez (2010), the Court gave students’ freedom to “express any viewpoint they wish — including a discriminatory one” as an example of “this Court’s tradition of protect[ing] the freedom to express the thought that we hate” (quotation marks omitted). There is no First Amendment exception for “hate speech” or “racist signs, symbols and speech.”.