Oct. 30, 2024: Southeastern Legal Foundation (SLF), joined by Young America’s Foundation (YAF), filed an amicus brief with the United States Supreme Court supporting Speech First’s First Amendment challenge to bias response teams. Indiana University, like too many colleges across the country, encourages students to report their classmates using an online bias reporting form any time a classmate says something that seems “degrading” or offensive. Reports are followed up by investigations and frequent referrals to disciplinary authorities.
As SLF and YAF explain in their amicus brief, bias response teams and reporting systems blatantly violate the First Amendment because they scare students into silence. When a student suspects that his or her speech could be reported to campus authorities, that student will choose to self-censor rather than risk the consequences that would accompany a bias response team investigation.
Director of Legal Initiatives for SLF Cece O’Leary states, “Bias response teams and bias reporting systems stifle debate and critical thinking on America’s college campuses. Now, more than ever, we need open discourse. Organizations like YAF exist for that very purpose, but administrators are undercutting YAF’s work and doing students a major disservice by policing speech and threatening punishment for simply having a conversation.”
SLF, YAF, and their allies have supported conservative students battling against these bias response teams for years now. But as SLF explains in its brief, this matter needs to be resolved by the Supreme Court because colleges have gotten away with this censorship for too long.
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