Judge blocks Texas ban on campus free speech after 10 p.m.

A Texas law that limits campus free speech after 10 p.m. is on hold as a result of a federal judge’s order Tuesday.

U.S. District Judge David Ezra issued a preliminary injunction that blocks the University of Texas System from enforcing the law while the case moves through the courts.  

“The First Amendment does not have a bedtime of 10:00 p.m.,” Ezra wrote in the ruling, published on the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression website. 

“The burden is on the government to prove that its actions are narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling governmental interest. It has not done so,” the judge wrote.

His ruling temporarily blocks the after dark ban, as well as the “end-of-term drum and amplified sound ban and end-of-term speaker ban,” the Austin American-Statesman reports.

The law in question, Senate Bill 2972, amended the state’s 2019 free speech law to restrict “expressive activities on campus” from 10 p.m. to 8 a.m. and during the last two weeks of each semester. 

Additionally, it requires public universities to enact policies that restrict sound-amplifying devices, including drums and other percussive instruments. 

The law, which went into effect Sept. 1, also limits free speech by members of the public who are not students or employees of the institution.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression filed the lawsuit on behalf of several student groups including the Fellowship of Christian University Students at UT Dallas, Young Americans for Liberty, two music groups at UT Austin, and The Retrograde, an independent student newspaper at UT Dallas. 

“Texas’ law is so overbroad that any public university student chatting in the dorms past 10 p.m. would have been in violation,” FIRE senior attorney Adam Steinbaugh stated in a news release. “We’re thankful that the court stepped in and halted a speech ban that inevitably would’ve been weaponized to censor speech that administrators disagreed with.”

The law passed earlier this year in response to Texas lawmakers’ concerns about pro-Palestinian protests disrupting campus activities. 

The sponsor of the bill, state Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, “argued during a Senate hearing that the bill was intended to strengthen existing state laws surrounding the expressive rights of students and employees at Texas public institutions,” the Dallas Observer reported in June.

Creighton believes the law will “prevent chaos and disruption by allowing university governing boards to determine what parts of campus may be used as public forums,” according to the report.

MORE: Judge to consider if Texas law unconstitutionally limits students’ free speech after dark