It appears the federal government is backing away from onerous campus speech restrictions issued in May by education and justice department bureaucrats, rules many on both sides of the aisle lampooned as highly restrictive, overreaching, and frankly, unconstitutional.
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education reports:
The agencies’ settlement with the University of Montana sought to impose new, unconstitutional speech restrictions, due process abuses, and an overbroad definition of sexual harassment and proclaimed the agreement to be “a blueprint for colleges and universities throughout the country.”
But in a letter sent last week to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, the new head of the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, Catherine Lhamon, said “the agreement in the Montana case represents the resolution of that particular case and not OCR or DOJ policy.”
“Assistant Secretary Lhamon’s clear statement that the Montana agreement does not represent OCR or DOJ policy—meaning it’s not much of a ‘blueprint’—should come as a great relief to those who care about free speech and due process on our nation’s campuses,” said FIRE President Greg Lukianoff. “Colleges have been bewildered trying to reconcile their obligations under the First Amendment with the requirements of the ‘blueprint’—essentially an impossible task. OCR and DOJ now need to directly inform our nation’s colleges and universities that they need no longer face that dilemma.”
Recent actions from OCR further suggest that the worst features of the Montana settlement are not being required of public colleges, indicating that OCR no longer regards the controversial components of its May agreement as a blueprint for all colleges.
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