FIRE Claims Another Victory Against Restrictive University 'Speech Codes'
by Jim Brown
March 1, 2004
(AgapePress) - A Pennsylvania university has agreed to repeal its controversial speech code.Back in September, a federal judge declared most of Shippensburg University's cultural diversity project and code of conduct unconstitutional. The school had banned what it called "acts of intolerance," which could include denigrating a person on the basis of creed. However, after being sued the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), Shippensburg agreed to drop that and other provisions that stifled free speech.
FIRE attorney David French says the settlement is a major victory for free speech. "The chilling effect of the speech code is now removed," the attorney says. "Students are free to speak to all of the issues that are of concern to them without a concern that someone hearing them would be offended and bring them up on charges."
According to French, under the school's old policy, if speech offended anyone, it lost protection. "Shippensburg's policies, like many campus speech codes, made free-speech rights depend on the reaction of the most sensitive student," he explains, adding that this case demonstrates universities are not exempt from the First Amendment.
"Diversity and tolerance policies, while having laudable goals, have to be very carefully designed not to suppress constitutionally protected speech and ... to ensure that they preserve the free marketplace of ideas," he says. "A university, particularly a public university, is not a place of indoctrination; it's a place of education -- and those two things are very different."
FIRE is currently challenging the constitutionality of a speech code at Texas Tech University. But the legal group says its efforts and those of other firms have already brought to an end that institution's policy of restricting free speech to a 20-foot-diameter gazebo.
